Secret of the Island of the Cat Demons
by Eduard Tubin
Summary: The Fire Nation stumbled upon nuclear technology. Nekoyasha or Cat Demon Island holds dark secrets only Azula can reveal. She travels Aang and her friends. Aang must trust Azula to decide how to remove this evil blight from their world.
1. Chapter 1

**Tales of Henwa Island**

**The Secret Island of the Cat Demons  
**

"My name is Azula Kai and this is First Year Calculus or Calculus 101 which proves the administrators who published the summer course calendar can't count; or it's binary for Calculus 5" Azula stood in front of a sunlight filled classroom with forty odd students and made grand gestures with her hands as she spoke. "Those of you who laughed at that joke already have earned 10 percent of their final grade. The other forty of you should try harder to appreciate my humor or spend your summer like normal people – on the beach getting jellyfish stings."

A tall Water Tribe girl raised her hand, "I thought this was Communications 101. I didn't sign up for calculus."

"You have the wrong class." Azula leaned over the table and spoke frankly, "don't most of you exchange students travel as a pack? How did you get separated? You can take calculus if you want but I imagine you would like to take the classes specifically for those from preindustrial civilizations. You can learn to derive functions, astound your friends – amaze your enemies."

Several students laughed and half a dozen students left the room quietly.

"No one voluntarily takes..." Azula paused as Zuko quietly entered the room. "my unspeakable brother Zuko seriously." Azula glared at her brother as he took a seat.

In a tribute to the summer heat, the afternoon sunshine and warmth and the apathy of the class that no one seemed to notice the Fire Lord had strolled into a college calculus class and taken a seat. No one noticed that a koala had electrocuted itself on the electric transformer on a pole outside the building and fell past the window and made a dull thud on the walkway outside the classroom. Azula knew no one took calculus in the summer unless they had to, or like her had no life. Zuko did have a life and could have spent the day in any of many thousands of nicer ways even if taken on a tour of the sewers below the streets of Komatsu.

"I went to your house and Karo told me you had a job teaching here." Zuko said in a matter of fact way but a slight smile showed he enjoyed making his sister uncomfortable. "So I came to take your class."

"Sorry," Azula pretended to look at a piece of paper. "Student grants didn't come through and you don't have the prerequisites blah...blah...blah."

"Fire Lord Zuko!" An excited brown haired girl in the second row of the classroom exclaimed.

Azula picked up a piece of chalk and fought with the urge to chuck it at Zuko's head. "Good to see one of you was awake to tell me this."

An hour and a half later, Azula and Zuko left the North Wing of the Science building. The Science building consisted of a dull looking concrete 'Bauhaus' style rectangular two story ugly looking affair with far too few signs to guide people and far too many windows that didn't open.

"Why did you show up?" Azula stepped over a dead koala.

Zuko tripped over the unfortunate marsupial. "What is a dead koala doing on the main walkway of a college?"

"Not very much." Azula said dryly as she put her knapsack on her shoulders. "Whole islands crawling with them but lets speak of the reason for your visit to our unique ecological zone."

"I came on a diplomatic mission to speak with your Prime Minister." Zuko blundered past a herd of foreign exchange students who didn't appear to notice him. "He keeps demanding more independence from the Fire Nation and refuses to negotiate on many important matters."

Azula knew Fire Lord Zuko had no plans to tell her about these important matters. She opened the door to the administration building and let her brooding brother into the main building. She had advice for him but given that he never asked, she had no plans to make his life easier. The Prime Minister reflected the mood of the people on the island. She knew the Fire Nation had a tradition of following authority (a bad trait in her opinion) and an ancient culture of polite civility (which had saved her from choking many people to death). The Fire Nation had a rather insular attitude to foreigners even many years after the War and even Zuko in his manner of walking, his regal red robes and his bearing showed that he felt himself superior to the Henwa Islanders. The Henwa Islanders had all of the cultural characteristics that made them seem so abrasive to those from the Fire Nation. They loved tourists and their money, had a casual and uncomplicated attitude to life and for some reason Zuko never completely understood – mimes. They did take wine and fine food seriously as Zuko well knew. He had come to Henwa partly to inquire about why the prices of some of the fine Henwa delicacies kept climbing.

As cafeterias went, the college offered a banquet. Azula walked past a long row of stainless steel trays that held food and made for the row of tea and coffee pots neatly set aside with a chalkboard with prices. "you want some coffee?" Azula asked as she poured out two cups of the brownish coffee, "maybe a biscuit? The fish soup might appeal?" Azula paid the barista behind the tan marble counter and then held her hand to her brother waiting for her brother to fork out for the coffee. He handed her the coins and she handed them to the barista.

"Why does a college need a barista?" Zuko followed Azula out past the maze of varnished red wooden tables and sat down at a table across from her. "I saw mutton and pitted olives. Students can afford this?"

"No," Azula had picked a seat near a large float glass window and wish a push shoved the bottom half open and it made a click and locked in place. "but as they say on Henwa – give us good food or death!"

"You once wanted to be Fire Lord – well this job has no glamor." Zuko looked around as he spoke quietly in case he said something offensive. The half dozen students didn't notice or care as they read textbooks, newspapers or napped with their feet up on the table. "If I make an unpopular decision; the people in the Fire Nation politely grumble but accept it. The Henwa Islanders push carriages and trams over and set them on fire, riot and loot for a week, go on strike, complain and send dead animals through the palace mail."

Azula wore an astonished look on her face, "when did this happen – the riots and looting?"

"Last spring," Zuko said quite softly, "and I knew the dead animals came from here because someone sent me a dead koala."

"I miss out on all the fun but the locals are a boisterous bunch." Azula tapped her coffee cup with her fingernail. "What did you do to piss off the locals?"

"Henwa doesn't pay into the veteran's benefits program but some islanders draw a pension," Zuko spoke until Azula raised her hand. "I asked that the locals to pay their fair share of taxes."

"Uh, I don't really need to know all of this." Azula said abruptly because she knew her brother and knew he wasn't quite getting to the point.. "You have some news for me?"

"I came to invite you to dinner with mother and Mai. I invited Karo as well. You haven't visited mom for a long time and she misses you." Zuko drank the coffee and burned the roof of his mouth. "She wishes to visit you and Karo and Lady Zhao. I invite you to a dinner at Henwa Island's most prestigious eatery – _The House of Food_. I made reservations for seven tonight." Zuko expected complaints from Azula and a rant about her dysfunctional childhood. She said nothing at all making the ringing in his ears seem louder. He was a family man now and Anya his daughter had an ear infection and he acquired it. Henwa used the metric system not the familiar Fire Nation system of units and he wondered if his dizziness came from the mass of metric units like the meter and kilogram which made his servants pass kidney stones when sent out to purchase food and supplies or cross the city.

Azula had a feeling her brother still hadn't gotten to the point but as she no longer had access to the top echelons of power; she let it slide.

* * *

Karo sat on the couch with Katara fussing over his hair when Azula entered the door, "we have an invitation or rather a command to have dinner with the Family that Put the Fun in Dysfunctional – The Fire Nation First Family." She slammed the door and tossed the daily mail on the coffee table.

"Zuko told me as much," Karo reached down and picked up the mail. Katara had his hair out of his hair decoration and it cascaded down to his waist in soft waves like Samson.

Azula noted that it had become as long as or longer than hers and decided to measure this for a fact. "Can you hold on? I need a measuring tape." Azula stood at one meter and sixty seven and a half centimeters tall. Zuko stood at about one meter and eighty centimeters. Karo stood at a bit under one meter fifty five centimeters. She had seventy centimeters of hair fully let out which meant she was 2.3928 times taller than her hair. She had measured Karo's hair a year ago and it was fifty four centimeters long which meant he was 2.8704 times taller than his hair. Had he finally beaten her? She had to test.

Karo began to ask but Azula had gone into the kitchen and came back with Lady Zhao's measuring tape.

"Can you hold out his hair?" Azula asked Katara as she held the green tape in her hand.

"What are you doing?" Katara asked as she followed Azula's injunctions. "Shouldn't you be getting ready. Lady Zhao left to fetch you some razors and shop for a nice perfume for all of us. She wants us to dress in the finest dresses money can buy and make a grand impression on the Fire Lord."

Azula measured Karo's hair and measured it again in order to ensure good scientific rigor, "dammit! sixty seven centimeters." Azula did the math and realized he was 2.3134 times longer than his hair – he had beaten her at the hair growing game. "He actually has longer hair for his height than I do! Stupid split ends!" She looked at Katara who looked confused and then changed gears, "and why do I need razors?"

"So you don't show stubble under the dress Lady Zhao will buy for you." Katara spoke and showed some enjoyment when she told Azula this.

Azula made a clicking sound, "okay, what justifies this?"

"Fine ladies want to look fine," Katara explained, "Even Karo will wear his best clothes and make an impression."

Karo knew he wouldn't get money from looking his finest so he remained ambivalent but since Katara offered to fuss over him; he didn't object.

Azula left the room without a word and Karo and Katara heard flushing and looked at each other with confused looked on their faces. Azula returned a few moments later, "you can't drown yourself in a toilet – crap!"

* * *

"She's making a break for it!" Lady Zhao pointed out the kitchen window as Azula with her speed and swift reflexes ran away from Katara who held out a finely made red dress and ran into an iron rake left behind by Karo from the day before when he had raked hedge trimmings off the lawn.

Karo stood next to his mother and shook his head, "I'd thought Katara might have anticipated this more robustly when Azula asked to see her dress in 'natural' light."

Katara stood over Azula with a look of stern concern on her face and the dress in her hand, "are you alright?" Katara held out her hand and helped Azula to her feet.

"Azula shook her finger at Karo and began running who looked at his mother and then ran off through the front door, "I think she knows who forgot to put the rake away – bye!"

Azula ran past the house and caught Karo and dragged him to the ground by grabbing his legs and then kneed him in his back, "why you – can't you!" She shouted at the struggling Karo as she put her knee in his back but her victory was short lived.

"This dinner is the most important event in my life," Lady Zhao grabbed both Azula and Karo by their ears, "and I have to get ready. I can't do that with you two acting like ding a lings!"

"Ow!" Azula had never had a mother take stern measures against her and she found it oddly comforting that Lady Zhao did care enough to partially detach her right ear. Azula knew her father would have let her beat up Karo, her mother would have simply dismissed it as a manifestation of her inner psychopathic tendencies but Lady Zhao had a novel approach to being a mother – she wasn't apathetic.

Lady Zhao let go of their ears as she shoved Azula and Karo through the front door. "Sit down you two!" She commanded.

They both sat down instantly.

"I give both of you a roof over your heads," Lady Zhao scowled and held her hands on her hips in the manner of Katara. "I give you two a great deal of freedom and put up with both of your odd habits!" Lady Zhao pointed at Azula. "I let you keep your telescope in the backyard! I didn't complain when you bought a pressure cooker, tried to use it and had some kind of industrial grade meltdown!"

Karo snickered.

Lady Zhao took one look at Karo and he blushed and grew silent, "she doesn't work alone. You often go blithely along with her plans. I can't recall how many social norms you two have violated because it gives both of you some odd pleasure. I know both of you missed out on childhood but for tonight can't I ask you to _please _act like adults?"

Azula had tears in her eyes and wiped them away, "Do I really have to wear a dress?" Azula felt touched not because she _had_ to wear a dress but because someone cared enough to reprimand her.

Lady Zhao sighed because she had reached one of Azula's neuroses and thought it best to work within the limits of Azula's psyche than try to change it: what made her neurotic made her a genius. Lady Zhao looked thoughtfully at Azula. Azula did dress well but dressed too much like a man for her tastes. Lady Zhao pondered things for a few seconds. "Okay – if it bothers you that much but please behave. I love my two dorks but not everyone appreciates you as I do. You two get properly dressed, clean up, smell nice and please no squabbling!"

* * *

The next day on a fine evening in late spring, Azula and Karo vented some steam in a heated game of basketball. A former tenant had placed a basketball net on a tall wooden board at the far end of the backyard. Karo and Azula had ignored it because they didn't have a basketball until Karo came back from a trip to the hardware store with a ball and a pump on top of the light-bulbs he had purchased under the injunction from Lady Zhao. Karo had purchased another week of art supplies and paper for his own amusement and typical for him, kept them in their original bag.

"Watch this," Azula shouted as she threw the ball at the side of the house. She didn't yet fully understand that 'watch this' actually triggered a screw up or some kind of accident because of the perverse laws of cause and effect in the Universe.

Lady Mai began to step through the back door that lead onto the patio of the backyard when the specific screw up was triggered. Azula bounced the ball off the back door just as Lady Mai began to open it. The door slammed shut and Lady Mai in her delicate robes fell on her ass. Lady Zhao stood behind her and had a look of absolute embarrassment tinged with the look of a mother about to yell at her kids.

Azula, for her part, could not work out what had taken place. She had taken a simple trick shot and she had the lead in the game over Karo by 15 to 7. She had no reason to expect Lady Zhao to appear outside the door with an angry look since she knew they were playing basketball in the back yard. Azula couldn't remember doing anything wrong. She had said nothing at all at the dinner at_ The House of Food_ while Karo only talked about 'safe' issues like how quickly Any had become a little girl, family and friends. Azula fetched the basketball after its odd and unintended bounce to a spot beneath the hedge and looked at Lady Zhao. Lady Zhao looked like she had found a a hole dug to the core of the Earth in the back yard after leaving her charges there to plant bulbs.

Azula tossed the ball to Karo and spoke to Lady Zhao, "yes?"

"Lady Mai has come over for a visit," Lady Zhao spoke between clenched teeth, "please be civil and join us for tea."

Karo tossed the ball into the net with a casual toss. "We did something?" he whispered in Azula's ear.

Azula walked in and looked at Lady Mai who glared back, "I came to pay my respects to Lady Zhao and thank her for a pleasant evening last night." Lady Mai said with a superficial imitation of politeness."

"We enjoyed ourselves," Lady Zhao answered back sweetly, "and we have to do this more often." Lady Zhao glanced at Azula but she said nothing.

"We don't have an ice pack but I found this," Katara entered the room with a neatly folded red towel in her hands, "I hope you don't get a black eye."

"I didn't expect the back door to hit me in the face," Mai smiled and accepted the towel.

Azula put the pieces together and tapped Karo on the back.

"What?" Karo said quietly."

Azula whispered into his ear, "I think I gave Mai a black eye...when I hit the door with the basketball – remember?"

"An accident – just apologize," Karo whispered back.

"Lets not get hasty - eh?" Azula answered back, "I can plead ignorance."

Lady Zhao noticed the pair whispering and decided to intervene. "Why are you two whispering?" Lady Zhao had a level and cold tone to her voice. She had no desire to offend the royal family and hoped to earn their fond affections for she still remembered the good and nice aspects of being a Duchess – the respect and the finest things. She had lived as a refugee in a strange land and long felt cut off from her people and felt neglected and ignored in Ba Sing Se. She hoped to regain some of that old privilege back. Azula would understand her motives and she would take time to explain it all to her when she had time but she knew Karo would have to wear the title. Fire Lord Zuko and Lady Mai liked Karo and Karo had no reason to hold grudges against them.

"We are sorry," Karo began slowly, "but we didn't see Lady Mai at the door and I'm afraid we hit her with the ball."

Azula could accept that. Lady Zhao looked clearly pleased with her son's apology and Lady Mai smiled softly.

"No harm done," Lady Mai said quietly. "I have a three year old girl and have had worse doled out by toys thrown at me."

A guard rushed in through the door holding a message in his hand and gasping for breath. She handed the message to Lady Mai and Lady Zhao rushed him to a dining room chair. He spoke between gasps, "Fire Lord Zuko – gasp – collapsed while playing with Anya – gasp – rushed him to the hospital."

* * *

Zuko lay in the hospital bed and looked at Mai and spoke with an apologetic tone. "Sorry I ruined your rest and relaxation."

"You didn't." Lady Ursa said kindly.

Azula pushed Karo out the door, "we will be – uh – finding food. We missed supper."

"Food?" Karo sounded astonished, "in a hospital funded by a socialized medical insurance plan?"

Azula pushed Karo out the door and followed him.

"Do the doctors here have any idea what you have?" Lady Mai pleaded.

"Where's Anya?" Zuko asked.

Lady Mai answered quietly, "With Lady Zhao and Katara in the first floor cafeteria. They are having jell-o and fruit cups for supper." Mai hugged Zuko, "can they help you?"

Zuko spoke as he held Mai's hand, "well do you know why my sister is such an insufferable ass?" He smiled at Ursa who looked sad. "Azula has had to deal with a past where our father tortured her mentally while he tortured me physically. The doctor said I have burn damage to my inner ear – the infection I got from Anya made it worse. That is their theory but all the tests for infections and nerve damage came up negative. They don't seem concerned so please quit worrying."

"Who was worrying?" Lady Ursa sighed with relief.

Mai sighed with relief, "when will you be discharged?"

"Tomorrow morning," Zuko said happily, "the doctor said I might have a concussion so they want to keep an eye on me for a night."

"Good to hear," Mai said, "do you want to talk to your daughter? She was really scared daddy was really sick."

"I would be happy to!"

I'll get her." Lady Ursa held back tears of happiness.

As soon as Ursa left the room, Zuko turned to Mai, "you do know that you left Azula unsupervised in a hospital." Zuko spoke with great concern and Mai turned to him as if to say 'oh dear Lord.'.

"Oh dear Lord!" Mai stood up.

* * *

"Patient File Number 167823, Ken Tsuwada," Karo read off a sheet of paper, "presents with visual distortions in the left eye and a headache in the back right portion of the skull. I omitted the medical terms because I can't pronounce them."

Azula paced the room with her hands behind her back, "we're playing 'manage the medical insurance' plan...so we don't need to consider the medical nature of the case."

Mai found Karo sitting behind the desk of _The Chief Hospital Accountant_ with Azula pacing the room. He had a file cramped office on the third floor with a large maple desk, an adding machine, a window with the red evening sunshine streaming through it and a padded wooden office chair that creaked as Karo wriggled. "I – uh – what are you guys doing?"

"What do the doctors want to do?" Azula said firmly as she asked about the welfare of Ken.

Mai watched both of them, Karo leafed through the sheets in the file and then flipped them over.

Karo read for a moment, "not much – they found a tumor in his brain about the size of a walnut – and he was 86. We should call him the patient formerly known as Ken Tsuwada."

"What are you two ghouls doing?" Mai stood at the doorway, 'aren't patient records confidential?"

Azula turned and looked at Mai, "we found this office open and the files on the desk."

"The Public Health authorities have noted an outbreak of syphilis among the Geisha – is it Geisha, Geashas or Geishi?" Karo had picked up another file. "All were clients of the Mistubishi Geisha House and we have to determine what it will cost to test all the Geishas - Geishi for syphilis."

"How much does mercury cost?" Azula began pacing as Karo looked up something on another set of open files.

"About a silver piece a kilogram for mercury oxide?" Karo looked up, "oh -uh – hi Mai."

"Hello," Mai said meekly. She had some sick desire to see what Karo and Azula would decide and she leaned on the door frame and waited patiently.

"And to test the hookers?" Azula paced the room.

Karo had to look for a file that contained the costs of various tests and shuffled papers. "Holy Cheese and Crackers!" Karo exclaimed as he did the sums in his head and came out with the cost for each test, "and we would shell out two gold five silver per Geisha per test just for supplies. If you include the lab time and labor then the cost hits four gold three silver. It takes a week in a lab incubator to grow the bugs and then someone who can identify bugs has to take a look. He doesn't come cheap. If you multiply that by forty then, Karo did the math. "Man! One hundred and seventy two gold for all the tests and that is _before_ treatment."

"The Geisha had a good medical plan?" Azula asked.

"I doubt it." Karo shook his head and pushed his glasses up his nose, "I don't think they belong in the same tax bracket as, say, civil servants. They may get lots of tips but I have no idea."

Azula looked at Mai but turned around and tapped the pile of paper Karo held, "Go with the cheap option and hit them all with the prescribed dose of mercury. Tell the Geisha to get used to the taste of mercury in their mouths and that the hallucinations will diminish with time."

"I came to prevent a felony," Mai said dryly, "and to let you guys know Zuko will be fine. He has an ear infection he got from Anya and he has inner ear problems."

* * *

"Why does Anya have a cat?" Karo asked if for no other reason than the ginger tabby cat seemed out of place in the not so gentle embrace of the young Fire Nation princess. Katara sat on the floor with her and the cat and played a game to see if the fat friendly cat would try to reach out and grab her fingers.

Azula held out the tag on the collar which said the cat had the name 'Teddy' and belonged to the pediatrics department, "our health dollars at work."

Anya held out a piece of thread and played with the cat and seemed oblivious to the outside world.

"The hospital has a couple of cats and a lemur to keep children in the hospital company," Karo explained to everyone. "The hospital says it makes the children calmer and cheers them up."

Azula also imagined the cats served a practical purpose – vermin control. The hospital sprawled over a vast area and she imagined it had plenty of mice and rats trying to make a living on hospital food.

Karo began playing with Anya and had the cat on its back squirming with glee. Zuko watched all of this with some amusement and with relief – he had worried about his daughter suffering some kind of emotional damage from seeing his father faint. Karo and Anya sat cross legged and played with the cat, a piece of string and they both made coochie – coo cat noises.

"I used to have a teddy bear when I was your age," Azula knelt down to speak at Anya's level. "I wonder if he's still in the collection of my stuff from childhood in the basement? My dad shipped me off to the Royal Fire Academy for Girls and the school didn't allow stuffed toys because they didn't think it proper for those destined to be warriors to have stuffed bears."

Karo pondered this, "that sounds rather unfair and cruel."

"Many things in life are unfair and cruel," Azula said thoughtfully as she played with the fat ginger tabby cat.

A nurse in the robin's egg blue robes of a hospital nurse knocked on the frame of the door and spoke politely, "visiting hours will be over in about ten minutes. Your friend Zuko needs his rest and you can return tomorrow."

Goodbye Zuko," Karo stood up and bowed.

"Take care of yourself," Katara added and then pet Anya on the head, "and you be a good girl for mommy."

Azula put the cat on Zuko's bed, "he likes you – no accounting for taste."

Lady Mai and Lady Ursa kissed him on the forehead and Mai gave him a hug. Lady Zhao bowed and wished him a good night's rest.

"Goodnight," Zuko said, "I hope I didn't cause you too much worry." Teddy, for his part, curled up at Zuko's feet and fell asleep.

* * *

"The classroom has windows that open, but that does very little to make that classroom bearable," Azula walked alongside Karo as she made her way to the small utility room the collge had set aside for her office. "I have the impression that summer students are the ones who failed first year calculus and then decided that sitting indoors in that magma chamber of a room in the summer beats not having the courses to become a doctor."

"Zuko spent the night under the care of people who failed calculus?" Karo asked as Azula wrestled with the lock.

"Indeed." Azula pushed her door open, "and I hope things work out for him."

Karo looked at the dingy interior of Azula's office and the off color cartoons she had posted up on the door. The college had given her the room that held the electrical equipment to run the elevators as her office. She had a beat up old metal desk painted in a military green and a light bulb on a string gave off a weak light. It didn't light up much except electrical boxes and a rough concrete floor. "Do all the college professors have offices like this?" Karo ran his hand across the desk and felt the dust on the metal surface, "I like the dank and dingy side of the office but it needs a window, air and maybe flooring."

Azula dumped a pile of homework assignments and sat at her desk, "this is an institution of higher learning and so you must earn tenure to inherit a rat feces free office. What are you doing here anyway? I thought you and Katara had planned to go with your mom to tour some promising places with the estates agent."

"They hate taking me along because _they_ claim I have fussy tastes." Karo sat on the edge of Azula's desk, "just because I hate that murky yellow color most people like in their bathrooms and I hate carpet."

"I had trouble finding this office," Fire Lord Zuko poked his head in the door, "but one of your students told me to find the door with the most _Krazy Kat _comics on it."

Azula squeaked in her chair, "and you will find the odd _Jubilee Street_ comic." Azula pushed Karo as a hint for him to get off her desk, "Karo started drawing them for the Ba Sing Se University student newspaper but the local newspaper here publishes his work."

"Well, its nothing but doodles," Karo blushed as he slid of the desk. "I wanted to write and draw about normal people our age. I don't know, perhaps it's therapeutic to imagine an ordinary life."

Zuko leaned over and looked over one of the Sunday panels of Karo's work. He had never taken comic strips seriously but he found himself drawn in by the lavishness of the strip and the odd energy which combined Azula's frenetic energy with Karo's quiet humor. "I didn't know you had a talent for art."

"Comics aren't really art," Karo said meekly, "The newspaper needs features to keep circulation – I'm there to sell papers. Reporters have a pad and pencil and I have India ink, watercolor and Azula to edit the work."

"I can see some of my sisters influence in the action scenes," Zuko turned to Karo and Azula, "I can see you two have found your own way in the world." Zuko found himself pleased with the new found good fortune of his friends. Azula had the talent to teach and work anywhere with a decent math or physics program and Karo had a clever knack for telling a story in pictures that would have newspapers willing to pay him a good salary to draw for them. "How did you ever learn to draw like this?"

Karo didn't really know. He had begun with crayons, pencils and books and despite his bad vision; he had a crystal clear imagination and grew into drawing as much as learned it. "As a kid I had no friends and plenty of pencils."

Zuko smiled, "and you Azula? Do you enjoy teaching?"

"It depends," Azula shifted her papers, "I enjoy mathematics and science and believe them to be the only hope of piercing the darkness of ignorance, suspicion and religion. I enjoy communicating about them and have met a few people who found new or novel ideas compelling." Azula rubbed her eyes, "the War saw many new discoveries such as new theories of physics, a model of the atom that works and yet never have so many lived so long knowing so little about so much."

"I came to ask you a question about the War," Zuko said quietly but not in a whisper as he produced a book from his robes. "_Nekoyasha_?"

"It didn't work but it killed plenty of people." Azula scratched her head. "The secret documents about Cat Demon Island only working their way up to your level?"

Karo leaned against a dirty wall, "I will admit I'm utterly lost. _Nekoyasha Island _belongs to the Southern Water Tribe so..."

Azula rescued Karo from his confusion, "_Nekoyasha Island_ was the main reason the Fire Nation took such an interest in the Southern Water Tribe. Fire Lord Sozin looked for two things – the Avatar and a monster weapon. He found neither. Fire Lord Azulon continued the search for both – you know the history of the Avatar." Azula's eyebrows narrowed, "Azulon found Uranium ore near _Nekoyasha Island_ and had a team of luckless scientists and political prisoners working at the research camp at _Nekoyasha Island _searching for a monster weapon. Azulon's team didn't find a monster weapon but did discover all the pleasures of working with radioactivity – poisoning, explosions, environmental destruction and cancers of all sorts."

"Fifty thousand or more people died," Zuko added with his characteristic severity. "The Fire Nation decimated the Southern Water Tribe to keep their work secret and protected from threats."

"When Ozai took the throne, this did seem like such a good way to kill people he went on to conduct more research." Azula creaked as she turned on her chair, "I only know the published history of the place because so much of that work remains shrouded in secrecy. Father never told me anything about the inner workings his pet defense projects and I never asked." Azula looked at his brother, "why do you ask?"

Zuko walked forward slowly and set a large red telephone directory sized book down in front of his sister. "_Nekoyasha _belongs to the Southern Water Tribe and they want us to remove the whole complex so they can fish there. I offered to bury the whole thing in a huge hole and let them have the island but they want it removed."

Azula gave her brother a curious look, "you didn't come to me to debate the merits of burying trash in a hole." She sounded civil but determined to get to the point.

"Is it possible," Zuko stood with his arms crossed, "for the Fire Nation to have achieved a _self sustaining chain reaction?_"

Azula thought for a moment; then gave a simple one word answer, "no." She turned the book around so she didn't have to read upside down and held it for a moment. "Science says energy and mass can be interchanged and one way to do that would be to take heavy atoms like Uranium and break them to smaller bits. The theory of fission has existed for decades but the engineering would prove impossible. On the one hand, you could make a device to make a huge explosion, level a city using fission according to this theory. That same theory suggests we could use wormholes to move from one part of the Universe to another or travel in time – so keep this in mind. No one can do it it with our level of technology. Why didn't Zhao turn the Northern Water Tribe city into a smoking ruin – huh?"

"It is possible?" Zuko insisted.

Azula scratched her head and thought about the problem again, "so are Moon rockets. We lack the technology to achieve it or the ability to pay for it."

Zuko tapped the book lightly. "My father believed in secrecy so I can't find the scientists responsible for this work but the book contains the secret papers from the last three years of the _Nekoyasha_ Project and they speak of a _self sustaining chain reaction_."

"Oh?" Azula had a sudden moment of revelation, "I didn't know that! I studied the physics of electronics so the physics of fission lie beyond my purview somewhat. If they achieved that..." Azula tapped her fingers and leafed through the book. Even the title page looked secret and imposing with a huge red seal warning that this work was beyond secret and into the territory where even casually mention of the work would result in unspeakable consequences. "I have my doubts because we lack the technology to achieve any of this...but you're the Fire Lord. Have you sent experts to the plant to inspect and assess what went on there?"

* * *

Karo coughed politely, "I don't mean to sound rude but this sounds like work for Avatar Aang. If the scientists played with forces better left alone, doesn't he have a role to protect and save us from this?"

"I sent him down to investigate along with Hakoda and Bato," Zuko shrugged, "and haven't heard from them but they left only a few days ago. Part of my reason for coming here was to speak with my sister who studied physics and is loyal to the Fire Nation." He glared at both Karo and Azula, "and wouldn't speak of such secret and dangerous matters to anyone else."

Azula had put Karo on to the duty of copying the diagrams out to proper scale, do other drawings based on the text and still she remained baffled by the information in the book. "I don't know why my stupid brother doesn't simply have the Avatar bury this place!" The evening had grown late and Azula had worked out very little. She sat with Karo on the living room floor swatting the mosquitoes drawn to the lamp and bouncing complex and misunderstood ideas in her mind. Karo had figured out one part by looking at the drawings and realized he had drawn a kettle filled with graphite and water. Azula had to work out how this could possibly be used to make Uranium atoms break apart. She had no idea how this could possibly work and Karo's diagram looked like nothing more than a schematic of a coal powered locomotive engine with a good deal more piping.

"Could your brother have visited this place?" Karo asked gravely.

Azula scratched her cheek, "it sounds like the kind of stupidly brave, principled thing he might do. They didn't do anything new as far as I could tell. I would take years to work all of the details out but the Fire Nation had prison labor, trained experts and the military."

"How dangerous would this kind of nuclear pile be?" Karo hated these documents. Everything about them screamed secrecy and death. He could imagine the layout of the vast facility in his mind from the diagrams and maps contained in the book. A vast city with street numbers housed guards, families, the workers and scientists in a small city. At a distance some kilometers beyond this the concentration camps housed the labor needed for the facility, its construction and upkeep. As with anything vastly inhumane, the four huge camps had numbers not names.

"Even _I_ wouldn't build it," Azula shifted the book to catch more of the meager tungsten lamp light. "I may have no regard for the welfare and feelings of others but I know when our science can't do something safely and when I can't run fast enough to escape should anything go badly wrong."

"What do you mean?" Karo found himself baffled by everything he had learned and questions yielded more uncertainties but at least he had begun to understand what science did not know.

"The nucleus of the atom of Uranium is just a big bunch of particles and it can't hold together because like over ambitious models made out of paste and tongue depressors – the glue can't hold it together." Azula held her hand out in a round shape and spread her fingers out. "It has too many particles and so it spits them out until it has become small enough for the nuclear glue to hold it all together. We call this radioactive decay and it does nothing too harmful but it gives off energy."

"Huh," Karo labeled another diagram.

"But under some not well understood conditions, Uranium might be made to fission or basically have its atoms break apart quickly but unless I have missed a crucial point – not in a controlled way. It would explode, melt apart, generate huge amounts of heat and kill people." Azula flipped through the book. "Some scientists think nuclear reactions make the Earth hot because when you place enough radioactive material together it heats up. Until today I met no scientist that thought a controlled reaction in the form of a_ self sustaining chain reaction_ possible given our technology or physics. The scientists working on this project claimed this plant can control the reaction. I think this is a boldfaced lie told to my father to please him and keep the project going. Nothing I can think up could possibly control a fission reaction once it got going."

"So kablam!" Karo made a grand sweeping gesture. "If the Fire Nation had something that made a big blast, why didn't they use it?"

Azula lay back on the floor, "and we come back to our basic question." She rubbed her forehead. "Why?"

Azula knew technology could fly in front of the science behind it. She had little expertise in nuclear physics as she had studied radio and electronics in her studies since the idea of sending messages at light speed across the ether intrigued her. She lay in bed and failed to get any sleep as she pondered the questions. She knew the basic reasons behind the decision came out of her dead father's mind and he had little restraint when it came to making large and usually unworkable military technologies. Karo knew nuclear piles were of little use in a world with hydroelectric, coal and gas power because these three power sources offered cheap and simple designs an entrepreneur could place in any sizable city and start a power utility. A nuclear pile offered all the disadvantages of costing a hundred times as much as any conventional power plant with the added excitement of blowing up randomly if they could be made to work. Only the Fire Nation had the resources to take up such a project and it struck Azula that her father had some reason behind his madness.

Azula knew Avatar Aang would consider the whole complex a blight on the planet and might try to destroy it. Aang could wreck the plant and bury it deep inside the earth but the contents would not stay hidden for long. It would slowly rise to the surface dragged up by glaciers or groundwater and would slowly poison the citizens of the Southern Water Tribe. He could shove it into the sea as an afterthought and trigger a massive explosion that would make the Southern Water Tribe homeland uninhabitable forever. The misery of the Southern Water Tribe didn't bother Azula – they had a small population and could be moved. As a scientist though, she had a duty and often the pleasure of preventing the ignorant from doing vastly stupid things.

"Karo!" Azula reached over and nudged Karo's side as he lay asleep in his futon. Karo wriggled and turned over and wrapped his red linens around himself. "Get up you!" Azula yelled.

"I can't fix nuclear piles," Karo rubbed the sleep out of his eyes. "We're victims of the banality of evil. The Fire Nation found the people with the big brains to build this awful thing and yet I doubt any of these people wanted to ruin the planet. The Fire Nation explored any technology that gave them an edge – airships, bombs, weapons of mass destruction like poison gas and massive fire bending attacks. Everyone went along led by a few evil or overenthusiastic people."

"I wanted to raze the Earth Kingdom to the ground using fire bending from airships," Azula sat in her bed, "at the time I believed it was all for the best."

Karo yawned, "hence the banality of evil. Lots of others thought this the right thing to do. No moral compass is absolute – I think it works more like a magnetic compass and shifts around depending on what or who pulls on it. You keep forgetting you were a confused kid living in awe of your father. You have to forgive yourself." Karo sat up on his arms, "well now you have a chance to try and undo something the Fire Nation did."

"Why don't they leave the bloody thing alone?" Azula said bitterly as she thought back to her other life before the War.

"I don't know," Karo said kindly, "Zuko might wish to undo some of the evil done by his father? Maybe the place poses dangers we haven't yet fathomed. Who knows? Maybe the thing can be made to do something useful. You need your sleep or you will get bandy and strung out and because your mind does its best work when you have a good night's sleep."

* * *

Five weeks passed and after Hakoda and Bato returned with Aang and reported the place uninhabited, an airship carried Karo, Azula, Toph and Katara to Cat Demon island. The _Nekoyasha Industrial Complex_ stunned even Azula: the size of the planned city of _Nekoyasha_ made her wonder how she could not have found out about the sheer scale of the place. The planned community had accommodation for perhaps seventy five thousand workers with blocks upon blocks of dull concrete blocks of flats built on the permafrost of the island. Fire Lord Zuko had the airship circle the dead city in the snow as they prepared to land. The Fire Lords had built a huge industrial city beyond the reach of any enemy where they smelted steel, made war machines and conducted weapons research without fear of enemy attack.

The irony of this place struck Katara most of all. She had grown up five hundred kilometers from this complex and had no knowledge of it. Sokka had planned the invasion during the Day of Black Sun without a clue of the size of the Fire Nation's presence in his backyard. Nekoyasha Island took its name from a rare - now likely extinct feral cat that hunted on the glaciers and snow covered lowlands of the islands. The Cat Demons may have had good hunting but people never did and no one from the Southern Water Tribe settled there.

The airship circled and began to descend to a clear snow covered field that would allow it to dock as the passengers selected for the mission: Toph, Katara, Azula and Karo stared at the buildings as they passed by beneath the airship. Everyone on the airship donned warm, blue Water Tribe parkas as they prepared to exit the ship.

"I gave the paper four weeks of strips in advanced," Karo told Azula as he pulled his backpack on and prepared to depart the airship. "I worked like a dog to get that work done and they haven't paid me yet."

Azula looked around, said nothing and pushed the door open. The cold wind hit her like a brick wall and she held her robes close to her. She saw a world of dark, cold twilight – that anyone could live and work here struck her as incredible. "We all have burdens we must bear."

"How long can we spend here?" Katara grabbed her bag and hefted it over her shoulder.

"My brother _didn't_ tell me he had spent a day wandering around the main complex," Azula tried to hide her face from the wind as she walked toward the building they had been told was the airship terminal. "He got sick so your guess is as good as mine. We're five kilometers from the building my brother explored so we probably won't get sick."

"I thought he had an ear infection," Katara said.

Azula nodded as she trudged forward, "well I have my own theory about his illness. My brother has the same kind of principled outlook on life as my uncle so he traveled her to investigate this place. He probably ran across something that made him ill. This explains why you came along – we need someone who can heal us if we do get sick." Azula patted Katara on the shoulder in a manner that provided no comfort.

The airship crew didn't wish to linger and they quickly formed the detail to pack all the supplies into the airship terminal that the 'team' needed.

Toph pulled the heavy glass door open, "shouldn't the inside of this old building be as cold as the outside?"

The inside felt warm and comfortable. The interior had been stripped of furniture and fixtures leaving exposed steel trusses but the building held heat. Azula found a switch with a green and a red button and when she pressed the green button, the electric arc lights came on with a loud buzz.

"Power?" Toph said as she listened to the hum. She could hear the hiss of steam underneath her feet. "Heat? Could people still live here?"

"Hakoda and Bato hung off the coast of this place and saw no activity except penguins and orcas feeding on penguins," Azula looked around at the exposed tubing, pipes and vents of the building. "They saw no signs of activity but they did notice some things which might explain why we have heat and power." Azula held out a large set of scale maps Hakoda and Bato had made, "Hakoda noticed these five ponds just outside the complex had remained unfrozen even in winter so my guess is that one or more of the reactors is still running."

Katara held the door open for the hapless workers who trudged in with the rest of the gear. She hoped they could find some way of dealing with this awful, toxic place so it could be wiped off the face of the planet. She bowed as the last member of the airship crew left.

"Good luck," he said quietly, "we'll return with supplies in a week."

"Very well," Azula waved dismissively from behind a large book of blueprints."Damn my stupid brother – he finds out about this place and tells the Avatar. The Avatar wants it dealt with and my brother believes its his responsibility because the Fire Nation built it. He tells me because I have a background in physics but then he decided to keep this secret. I had no means of talking with any of the important experts in the field of atomic science at Ba Sing Se University. When it comes to atomic piles the size of large houses I find myself a bit out of my league."


	2. Chapter 2

**Tales of Henwa Island**

**Chapter 2**

Zuko had recorded where he had traveled in the main complex at _Nekoyasha _in a set of detailed notes. Azula thought he had grown ill because of radiation exposure from the materials kept on the site. Azula had to conclude she was wrong because she had a payphone sized box – a Geiger counter – that measured ionizing radiation and Zuko had not wandered near a radiation source inside the complex. She had a mouse as backup in case the heavy box was not calibrated and she did blunder into high radioactivity following Zuko's lead. If the mouse twitched and died; she had some idea she had gone around the wrong corner or would return home with a high white blood cell count.

This didn't mean Azula didn't encounter noxious things. The plant had ammonia and boric acid but the tanks seemed intact. She found tanks of nitric acid had started to leak in a part of the plant near the pools that held the used fuel rods under water. The mouse died and she left very quickly. This discovery left her with two questions – why did they keep the used fuel and what possible purpose could something used to make etchings on metal have in a facility like _Nekoyasha_.

She needed another mouse.

Katara stared out of the yellow foot think windows that allowed a crane operator to view the two huge Olympic sized pools where the Fire Nation had organized the spent or used fuel. Even in the brightly lit room, she could see a blue glow from some of the neatly arranged fuel rods at the bottom of the fifteen meter deep pool. Katara found this oddly unsettling. She found the whole facility – a flat roofed factory like building with the tallest metal stack she had ever seen – oddly unsettling. She found the two meter thick walls unnerving and the huge array of plumbing unsettling. The huge nuclear complex had all sorts of superlatives but one made her shiver – deadliest place on Earth. She wondered how the Fire Nation could build a complicated, ghastly machine for smashing atoms and hope to keep control.

The only thing she found reassuring was the weather outside and the penguins in the huge fresh water reservoirs using their heat to keep themselves warm she had seen outside. The penguins added a touch of the absurd to a barren and evil landscape.

Azula had told Toph _definitely_ not to earth bend _anything_. Azula assured Toph that any mistake in this strange place would instantly kill – if Toph was lucky – painfully and slowly kill if she were very unlucky. Azula told Toph that she had no idea how long a person would live without skin. Karo kept a wary eye on Toph as they toured the _Reactor Hall_. This huge room had a flat, thick concrete floor that Toph reckoned was four meters thick with the four huge lab beaker shaped reactors in the floor under their feet. She could 'see' the piping and the complex machinery below her feet and even 'feel' the heat and the pressure. Karo noticed their location as circles with metal squares of red, green and black – some kind of nuclear color code – arranged in a grid. The _Reactor Hall_ had mustard yellow tiles Karo hated covering the rest of the floor. The room stretched as long and as wide as a football field and had a high ceiling filled with pipes and supported by metal trusses painted white with some kind of fire proofing material. Four cranes hung from metal supports over each reactor. Karo could not work out the purpose of those but noticed that the winch hooked into a metal looped attached to the metal painted squares in the grid.

"Something definitely happening here," Toph stood on the huge circle that marked _Reactor 3_.

Karo fiddled with the piece of film encased in black foil pinned to the shoulder of his black robe. Azula had given these out as a crude means of measuring exposure to the invisible, demon like energies of this place. "Don't do _anything!_" Karo decided he would not like to meet God after something he didn't understand had blown him to pieces.

"I had no plans to do anything," Toph sounded halfway insulted. "I can feel the steam flowing through this thing under higher pressure than the others."

Azula pushed a large sliding door open and walked into the reactor room, "we have witnessed a first – a Fire Nation technology that actually works and didn't screw up in some new and unanticipated way." Azula raised her fist in a sort of salute, "go team Fire Nation!"

"How comforting!" Toph said sarcastically.

"Aang wants to get rid of this thing," Karo said as he guided Toph around the end of a metal hook that dangled from the crane for reactor two. "Any ideas how to do it?"

"I figure this plant has enough radioactive material to raise the cancer risk of every inhabitant of this planet twenty fold." Azula said in a matter of fact way, "we might as well try to cure the cancer it will cause: it would prove a simpler undertaking than taking this complex apart. I don't mean to be a pessimist but let me explain what we're up against. Even our best scientists barely understand the destructive nature of fission. If the Fire Nation had somehow busted it; then we could walk away from _Nekoyasha Island_ and let the penguins mutate and simply check on it once in a while: the damage having been done would not be our problem. Move the Southern Water Tribe villagers as a precaution so they don't die and go home."

"The Avatar wants to rid the world of this thing," Toph said, "and I don't want to live in a world with this thing."

Azula showed a brief moment of irritation, "this thing still works so shutting it down and taking it apart would take decades. We could dismantle it but some things here don't like being taken handled. We could ship it to some remote site and assuming we avoided a train collision in Omashu or some shipping accident we could bury it in the middle of the Seewong Desert."

Katara walked along a catwalk strung between the cranes for fueling _Reactor 3 and 4_. "Why not let the Avatar smash it and destroy it completely?"

"Oh! I had not considered that!" Azula put her hands to her face in an obviously mocking gesture as she stood on top of Reactor 2. "He could unleash his full powers on this place!" Azula pointed down at the pattern of red, green and black tiles. "Even I don't understand exactly how it works and_ I sure as hell don't want to screw with it_. I get the willies standing on this lid. Assume the Avatar comes riding in on his Sky Bison and unleashes his full fury – all four elements – on these four reactors to blow them to dust. The material under my feet would heat up to the temperature of the Sun when exposed to the air, the graphite would ignite and then everything would explode. The Southern Hemisphere of this planet might become absolutely uninhabitable. Everyone has noticed we have power and heat. We have power and heat _because_ the scientists could never shut this thing down safely in the time they had to evacuate this place after the War. They left it running not to give the penguins a mildly radioactive hot tub but _because_ this whole place needs a constant flow of cool water or it will go up in a series of explosions that would make Sozin's Comet look like lame movie effects."

Toph swallowed hard, "we're sitting on a bomb?"

"The bomb!" Azula said loudly. "The Avatar could blow this place off the map but not fast enough to prevent the reactors from melting down and blowing up. He could cover it in water but then he would poison the ocean. Azula looked up at Katara. "You went to look at the fuel rod ponds or pools? They have much more poison in them than below my feet."

* * *

Azula sat with her feet up on the Control Room Counter as she sipped a cup of rehydrated pot noodles. She could view the Reactor Room below her through plate glass windows. She had begun to understand how the entire nuclear system worked and appreciate how stupid the Fire Nation had acted. They had built _Nekoyasha_ with steam age technology and some lucky guesses. Azula knew the plant and its rudimentary safety systems worked on clockwork, hydraulics and electromechanical machinery better suited for steam locomotives and penny arcade flip-book movie viewers. She took comfort that since the control room lay three floors above the reactor room floor and if something went badly wrong, she would never feel it. She sat at the worlds largest steam engine control room and knew that if something did go wrong, the quaint technology of the plant could do nothing in time to save her.

"We can't do anything to stop this?" Katara walked into the control room.

"No," Azula handed a set of yellowed blueprints to Katara noting the irony of handing over plans for a nuclear reactor to a Southern Water Tribe girl. "The Fire Nation had an extensive nuclear program that extended far beyond here."

Azula sighed, "_The Drill_ used a modified _''GPWR-Kitsune'_ Reactor for power." She did not bother explain the acronym to Katara since she had noticed Katara holding the blueprint upside down. "This plant has four _much larger_ _GPWR-Daifun_ class reactors. I found the plans for the Drill in the Engineering Workshop at the South end of the building. They built the components here but assembled the whole drill in the Earth Kingdom. I had no idea and didn't know - call it willful ignorance."

"What about all the people in Ba Sing Se or the soldiers?" Katara flipped through the book but it did nothing to help her understand the powers the Fire Nation had unleashed.

"I got tired of lugging this machine around," Azula tapped the metal cover of the Geiger Counter sitting on the counter. Katara knew the explanation would be theatrical and long winded. "It measures the amount of radiation in the area. Since no one agrees on how to measure this, let me use the amount of bananas as a measure since bananas are slightly radioactive. In this room, we are getting about as much radiation as eating a half dozen to a dozen bananas a day – I hate bananas by the way. When the Avatar busted _The Drill, _he caused a leak in the steam pipes of the reactor. We all got exposures at about the level of eating a thousand or so bananas at one go."

Katara imagined Azula had done the sums and her sums were correct. She had no idea what a blast of radiation would do but then again she knew nobody had any clear idea. "What about _The Drill_ now?"

"I wouldn't roam around inside it," Azula watched the pattern of unchanging lights and dials in the dimly lit room as she spoke. "I suppose it can't do much where it sits and the hard steel shell probably kept the worst contamination inside. I should have known; could have known how they built _The Drill._ It used a command module mounted high above the machine which made me wonder – why have something sticking out on a machine designed to go through walls? I saw the heavy gear worn by the engineers and yet I never thought this kind of power made it work. "Azula pointed down at the reactor floor. "The Fire Nation probably used nuclear power in The Drill did this for a sinister purpose: they hoped if the Earth Kingdom did destroy the Drill, then the reactor core might become exposed and kill them. Solid Fire Nation engineering proved the flaw in that plant."

"Karo wants to continue operating once we understand it," Katara said, "he doesn't see it as dangerous as long as kept under close supervision. The Southern Water Tribe and this islands of the Earth Kingdom don't have power and he told me this might provide cheap power for them."

"Remind me to hit him upside the head," Azula said as she sat in the chair, "I haven't figured out if the scientists hid to avoid the wrath of the world when their handiwork was discovered or died of radiation sickness. No one else understands this place – I am guessing a good deal. I have no convictions this place can be run safely. Fire Lords didn't consider safety a priority and Lord Ozai had prison labor and so who knows how many faulty welds, batches of bad concrete or miscalculations went into building this place. Even if this thing works what do we do with all the used fuel? Hey King Bumi – can we stuff used fuel rods inside your caves?" Azula snorted with contempt. "We can eliminate that option. The Southern Water Tribe can buy a cheap coal powered generator to keep their fridges going."

Katara thought about this for a moment and realized as a group her village didn't need electricity. "What about letting the Avatar blast a huge hole under it – perhaps with the aid of Toph and capping it under thousands of meters of rock?"

"I wish!" Azula put her arms in the position of the 'fan of power' behind her head. "It won't work and the poison will get out in a short time. This island has glaciers that melt in the summer and then the water flows through cracks in the rock. That water would reach this place even deep underground, heat up and surface with dissolved radioactive material. Even if we could find a way to cap this monster, the plant would heat up from inside and probably leech out. We have ideas but no knowledge: we can't act like we're fixing a locomotive or ship."

"Dismantle it?" Katara said meekly.

"I would agree but that might take decades. I looked into that and sites in the Seewong desert would serve well enough." Azula pulled out an old office chair covered in faded blue leather. "Drill a hole, drop radioactive material in it, seal it and bury it. This assumes the Earth Kingdom wants to help – a long shot."

Katara had seen the Seewong desert and it seemed perfect for losing things but the tribes of the Sand Benders called it home. The Seewong desert covered an area the size of America and proved unlikely to attract attention but she had moral reservations. "The tribes of the Sand Benders call it home. They live as nomads so we would have no means of predicting where they would live."

"We could stake out a repository – the needs of the many?" Azula offered, "We could bury it so deep they would never muck with it or simply dislocate them. What we need for this to work is a part of the world where this can work and where the people living on top of it have no political voice. I don't see nomads as a problem. I think taking this place apart would give engineers the most problems. How would they take this place apart without killing them? How do we ship this waste to the Seewong desert and avoid an accident where the radioactive waste meets a passenger train? Even given the good luck to convince the Earth Kingdom or bribe them, keep the Sand Benders off the site and get the waste apart and shipped to the site we may have decades of work – as I mentioned."

* * *

Karo and Toph walked along the walls of one of the _Sequestering Pools_ which weren't pools, they were lakes of hot fresh water. The complex had five of them, each with an area of just over a square kilometer and a depth of fifteen meters. Toph lugged a payphone sized Geiger Counter on her back which clicked from time to time – indicating no abnormal radioactivity. Karo spent his time looking through binoculars and pushing the tame penguins out of his way. The penguins didn't swim in the pools – they didn't like hot, fresh water but they hung around them like tourists around a famous hot spring. In Karo's mind, this proved evolution could select for an organism adapted to the harsh, cold climate of the island but that didn't mean they had to enjoy it.

"These birds are almost as tall as you," Toph laughed as she walked bare foot along the rock wall that dammed off the pool.

"One of these foul beasts is pecking my leg," Karo paused to take a reading from the strange gadget on Toph's back. He had no idea what constituted dangerous but the dial that indicated the level had a helpful red 'Danger' reading. The needle of the dial remained in the white and he breathed a sigh of relief.

"How many _bananas_ have we eaten?" Toph said as she pushed a penguin out of her way.

"Six," Karo answered, "and I hate bananas."

"Why does it smell like laundry softener?" Toph felt warm in spite of the winds that blew in from across the island.

"Ask Azula," Karo grumbled.

Aang wore the finely crafted parka of the Northern Water Tribe. Karo could see the dim outline of Appa nervously growling as he obediently waited in the field of rock and snow between the warm pools as Aang approached him.

"I had not expected you," Karo bowed in spite of his abruptness.

Aang raised his hand as if to silence both Karo and Toph, "I came because this requires my immediate attention. I had not realized the kind of evil the Fire Lords had engaged in until now."

"The reactors are rather ingenious," Karo pushed a persistent penguin who had decided to peck at his pants, "and are way ahead of their time."

"I won't allow such abominations of nature to exist in this realm!" Aang walked up to Karo and spoke severely. "I plan to see this thing utterly erased from our world!"

"Damn this stupid..." Karo glowered at a yellow eyed penguin in its trademark tuxedo. "I meant the bird – not you Avatar." Karo hoped that would soften the offense. "Azula doesn't think burying or blowing this place off the face of the Earth will work. She thinks destroying it and burying it will only make matters much worse. We have checked the place out and in spite of the way a nuclear reactor spits in the face of nature; this place appears to still function."

"Does she understand how it works?" Aang asked forcefully.

"The Fire Nation had more than a quarter of a century of trial and error to build this place," Karo reminded Aang, "so they have stolen a march on the rest of us and no one has any idea how it really works. That the Fire Nation did achieve controlled nuclear fission should be considered a testament to their sheer dogged determination. I have mixed feelings about this place. The _Nekoyasha Island_ complex strikes me as a wonder as great as the walls of Ba Sing Se or the temples of the Air Nomads. At the same time, I wonder how many people died to make it a reality."

"What would you suggest?" Aang looked at Karo who shrank back.

Karo gulped and fidgeted with the probe end of the Geiger Counter. "It generates electricity – lots of it._ Reactor 3_ still powers two turbines to provide the island with power so we could operate it commercially until we have used all the fuel then at some point in the future – we could dismantle it."

Aang scowled.

"We'll go and find Azula." Karo said as he tapped Toph on the shoulder.

* * *

Azula had made sense of the controls. Each reactor had a console with levers and dials to make the reactor function in a stable fashion. Each console overlooked its reactor and controlled everything from the speed and heat of the reactor to the overhead cranes that raised or lowered the fuel rods into place. Each reactor needed three operators to man it – two to man the controls and a third to watch the display of lights on the far wall. A panel of lights behind the operator console showed the status of each fuel rod, the status of the control rods and in a primitive fashion; the flow of water to and from the reactor to the heat exchangers. In _Reactor 3_, as far as Azula could tell, the operators had left it on a dull boil and fully fueled. She didn't know this exactly for several of the small bulbs that lit to indicate the presence of fuel had burned out and she had no idea where to find replacements.

Aang followed Karo and Toph through the meandering halls and long passageways, over the catwalks that led over the ponds that stored spent fuel. Aang looked over the railing and saw a blue glow emanating from beneath the water of the huge ponds. The scale of the facility impressed Aang even if the complexity of it failed to impress upon his Air Nomad mind. Nothing about the reactor building hinted at beauty – concrete, steel and industrial functionality – not a single sign of individual expression.

"You can see the four reactors as outlines in the floor," Karo pointed out uncomfortably as they walked along the catwalk over the huge reactor complex. "That one," Karo pointed to _Reactor 3_, "still operates."

After the group passed through an open steel doorway which had an injunction to remain closed, the group found Azula staring up at a strange display of lights. Aang took off his parka and folded it under his arm. Karo and Toph sat down on the chairs at the control panel.

"Don't put that on the console," Azula said without looking at Aang.

"What will happen?" Aang asked.

"Nothing of consequence," Azula answered back, "but an alarm of some sorts will ring. Katara hit a button and it took me a half hour to figure out how to shut the damn thing down. I sent her off to fetch some fresh, dehydrated food and turn it into dinner and tea."

Aang held onto his parka. "You don't sound surprised to see me," Aang said as he looked over the landscape of dials and levers. He noticed a white lab mouse running in an exercise wheel in a metal cage but at least a mouse made sense.

"Can't you just shut it down?" Azula tented her fingers, "I had expected you to show up as soon as possible to make sure we hadn't died. We have explored about ten percent of this place and found no hazards just yet. A tank of nitric acid has begun leaking and giving off fumes but that's all. Anyway, the question on your mind – why can't we shut this thing down?"

"I want to destroy it," Aang said sharply. "I don't want to turn it off and walk away."

"The world is not prepared for this kind of thing – am I right?" Azula turned to face Aang, "given that I can't make sense of all the science and engineering behind it I agree. Unfortunately the nature of the beast makes it impossible to shut this thing down and leave it. I could pull a few rods and twist levers which would stop the machinery. Sound good? Let me tell you what we're up against."

Aang watched the mouse in its cage, "okay."

"The scientists left this thing running," Azula shuffled a few concepts around in her mind to make things easier to explain. "They figured out that Uranium could give off energy by shedding particles and if they put enough in close proximity, the particles from one atom would hit the atom of another and make it break apart, give off energy and so on. They called this fission. The reactors gave them a way of controlling this process and making power from it. The problem is that once started, they found out even when things are shut down; they needed to keep everything cool because the reactor core would grow surface of the Sun hot. They left one of the reactors running to keep things humming or atom smashing along – they had to keep water flowing into the reactors to keep them from blowing up. It they walked away and this place had no power, it would probably poison a huge swath of the Earth."

Katara emerged from a stairwell holding a tray of food and a metal pot of tea. She saw Aang and placed the tray on the console so she could give Aang a hug in greeting.

A siren went off and Azula picked up the tray and pressed a series of buttons. "I wish I could train you to stop doing that!" Azula gave Katara a look of grave irritation as the siren wound down and grew silent. "I would pay good money to choke the now dead bastard that wired in the 'test' function for the emergency siren."

Aang looked earnest, "I need a solution. I can't allow this dangerous thing to exist! I won't let Karo turn it into a power plant...and I won't wait half my life to tear it down."

* * *

Katara and Suki found many interesting books in their explorations of the various functional buildings that surrounded the main complex and they enlisted the help of Karo to dutifully carry them back to Azula. Most of the documents consisted of nothing more than accounting and materials spreadsheets but Azula found the names of plant personnel, key scientists and administrators attracted to the various pieces of paperwork that flowed through the complex.

The trio found Toph at the control console but Azula was absent.

"I tried to stop her," Toph swiveled and then kicked herself toward Katara. "That woman doesn't listen and she went inside the reactor. I can feel her crawling on top of the steel lid. She found out about these doors that led to the spaces above the reactor and so she went inside."

Katara looked at Toph, 'where are these doors?"

Toph stood up and motioned for the others to follow her. Everyone dropped their pile of documents and followed Toph down the stairs to the reactor floor. She pointed to an open domed metal metal hatch which had a painted plaque that read 'For Authorized Personnel Only'. " She's somewhere inside." Toph said.

Katara climbed down the metal rungs into a meter and a half tall concrete crawlway dimly lit by red lights. Suki and Karo followed behind her nervously anticipating an invisible monster to engulf them.

They found Azula sitting on the steel floor eating a pot noodle with a notebook next to her. Between her and the others was a maze of upright shiny steel tubes about the size of a wrist. "What!" She asked as everyone stared at her.

Katara crawled around the tubes and faced Azula, "what is this place?"

"The engineers call it the reactor lid," Azula said calmly, "Two thousand tons of welded Fire Nation tough steel and concrete that seals the reactor from air and protects us – we hope – from harm."

"Can you hurry up!" Karo complained from the far side of the maze of tubes, "its hot as well the top of a nuclear furnace in here."

Azula had enough room to stand up with little fear of bashing her head but she rose carefully because the dim red lighting did little to help her resolve details and she had banged her head on a metal bolt when she had crawled into the cramped space. She held onto her pot noodle and pointed at Katara with the cheap wooden chopsticks that came with the wax paper can of noodles. "I came down here to fix some things in my mind."

Katara felt the heat and frustration and her Water Tribe common sense told her she did not want to walk on top of the very thing that threatened to poison her homeland but she shrugged, "what would happen if this thing exploded?"

"We would die," Azula said, "the penguins would die in a blast of radiation and then a cloud of radioactive dust would rain down on all of the rest of the world. Kind of cool that the Fire Nation figured out how to do this – huh?"

"Can you guys please get moving?" Suki shouted out. "I'm starting to get sticky."

"The steam lines run out to the heat exchangers under that corridor." Azula shouted out, "anyway I'm coming!" She grabbed one of the shiny rods and moved in front of Katara. "The Fire Nation has had steam power for generations – you know that – you've seen our ships. This thing really 'boils down' – nice pun – to a steam engine tipped on its side and shoved into a concrete cup about five meters across and twelve meters deep."

Katara looked at the shiny tubes, "and these things?" She tapped a metal tube.

"The ends of the fuel rods." Azula answered as she continued forward, "under your feet are steam pipes, then another metal lid, then the reactor core where all the heat is made, another thick metal lid and then the pipes that carry cold water into the reactor out the bottom. We're really in no danger at all up here unless you count bashing your brains out on a bridge bolt as dangerous." Azula ducked as she passed a large bolt in the ceiling. "I have learned a good deal by crawling all over the inside of this thing although I still don't know if I can get into the space underneath it. Watch your head."

Katara ducked, "what's the problem then?"

"It lies under out feet where atoms of Uranium get smashed apart," Azula held her pot noodles in her left hand as she slowly walked forward. "The Fire Nation really stole a march on the rest of the world. Most of this place functions using the kind of technology any country with steam powered ships has at hand – plumbing and the ability to boil water. The reactor pile surprised me because to make it work and _not kill everyone within ten clicks_ requires some degree of understanding of how the atom works. I knew of fission – er – atomic power as a concept on the very limits of theories." Azula stood in front of Suki and made an abrupt gesture with her free hand for her to turn around in the cramped space. "The amount of trial and error required to achieve this without proper theoretical backing must have been ghastly."

Suki turned around, "what does all that mean?"

"You might find a few dead welders in the crawlspace," Azula answered back, "and the reason you and Karo are so warm is because you are wearing your parkas."

* * *

"No dead welders?" Suki followed Azula down a long tunnel that logically should have led to the base of the reactor where the cold water entered the reactor. Azula had picked Suki to join her in spelunking the bottom of _Reactor 3_ because Karo complained far too much. Suki had steady nerves which both girls needed in the dimly lit world of the basement of the reactor hall although Azula imagined she wore her Kyoshi Warrior uniform either to annoy or because she wanted to die in them.

Azula jumped onto the floor of the tunnel and found a passageway leading to the base of the reactor. "I suppose they were entombed in the five meter thick walls." Azula felt the smooth concrete wall and walked forward into a room that had a maze of plumbing. She had hoped the room would be dry – leaks in the cold water cycle could mean something far worse wrong inside the reactor running at metal welding temperatures above her head.

"You are not a happy person are you?" Suki looked at the oddly geometric tangle of pipes that exited out the wall above her head. The Fire Nation had a philosophy of engineering that made things thick, bulky and heavy. Suki had seen Fire Nation phone booths made so strong they could protect the caller from meteorites and the reactor showed the same level of over-engineering seen in their prisons, ships and forts.

"No." Azula said as she tapped the pipes. "Should I be?"

"Do you regret anything you had to do during the War?" Suki followed Azula as she scribbled notes with a pencil on a metal clipboard.

"Just now I realized Karo would prove less irritating," Azula continued writing. "What did I do to you?"

"You interrogated me, wouldn't let me have proper food and deprived me of sleep; imprisoned me and left me to rot," Suko held onto a water pipe and poked Azula in the chest.

Azula looked down at her chest, "what did I do to you that was especially cruel or beyond the norm for my duties as a princess of pain?" Azula looked at Suki and said rather enigmatically, "you have one of the cutest noses of any girl I have met. Sokka is a lucky man."

Suki made a mental note to ask Karo or Katara about Azula and followed her as she made her inspection. Suki had never made sense of Azula although she had no trouble sensing Azula had all the hallmarks of being a genius. Suki disliked Azula but decided not to pick a fight with her while probing a nuclear reactor.

"Graphite Moderated Pressure Water Reactor," Azula made a few notes as she ducked pipes and walked around the supports that held up the reactor from the thick concrete floor of the concrete vessel.

Suki ducked under the pipes, "I'll take your word for it."

"I noticed a set of pipes that force nitrogen into the core." Azula put her hand on a silver pipe with red characters on a white background with a black arrow beneath it that read 'Inert Gas Pressure Line'. "The plans we read were accurate and every bit of plumbing they show _is_ here. Graphite is the stuff in my pencil and it will burn in open air."

"Why use it?" Suki hesitated to touch anything.

"I haven't quite worked that out," Azula admitted, "but the plans hinted at something about 'moderating' the reaction. The inside of this pile or reactor reaches about seven hundred degrees Celsius and so if air got inside the vessel then it would burn. I can sit down and work it all out when I have time – right now I feel relieved the plans reflect reality."

Azula kept taking notes and largely ignored Suki. Azula had problems beyond Suki's hurt feelings to consider as she focused on her task. The reactor had a concrete outer casing with holes to let people and pipes pass. Inside fit a steel pot or_ reactor vessel_ that contained blocks of graphite with holes to allow water pipes and fuel rods to pass. The collection of graphite and pipes the engineers called _the pile_. Above and below the vessel sat three meter thick steel shields to protect people working near the reactor. The reactor pile boiled water, made steam and drove a turbine to spin a generator. The Fire Nation engineers had taken inspiration from their navy vessels. They burned coal inside a round firebox with water pipes that ran up through it to make high pressure steam used to run turbines. Around the firebox a steel jacket filled with water from the surrounding ocean called a calandria acted as a heat shield and kept the heat even and prevented boiler explosions.

* * *

"Dismantle it!" Aang said angrily, "or I will." He made an effort to find Azula and found her taking notes as she crawled along the top of the reactor she had renamed 'Sanji' if for no other reason than it amused her.

"You will need a few tools," Azula held out a screw driver.

"I will make a pit and shove the whole thing into it!"

Azula sat like a Buddha and pondered that, "you hate the Southern Water Tribe and Kyoshi Island that much? You could shove the whole thing in a pit five kilometers deep but then it would sit and contaminate the sea and ground for thousands of years. I assume you can earth bend and make a big wall to escape the blast of radiation you will face when the four reactors blow up and spew their contents into the air as they break open."

Aang sat down next to Azula, "why can't we solve this?"

"We never should have built this," Azula said quietly, "but we did and now we have to face our problems. You can control all four elements so lets think about all the tools at your disposal. You could use air bending and blow the building into the sea and it would sink and the reactors with all that heat would explode like massive bombs when the sea water filled them. Fire bending would prove useless – this would result in a radioactive inferno because the reactor core burns in air. The Fire Nation built in no safeguards against fire and so the fire would rage for months driven by the reactors or they would meltdown with such heat that they would reach the groundwater and explode. Water bending might allow you to raise a huge wave to wash over the place and such it into the sea but that only would spread the poison into the food the people in the Southern Water Tribe rely on. Burying it would probably poison the sea and the groundwater, cause a meltdown and kill you. Rocks have tiny cracks and the plant would sit underground, heat up and drive water from deep underground through cracks to the surface and into the sea at the very best. At the worst, water from the glaciers melting in the highlands of this island and sea water driven deep into the remains of the reactors would turn to steam and explode and drive radioactive steam to the surface."

Aang tapped a pipe and felt the warm and perfectly machined surface, "you doubt my skills?"

"I doubt mine," Azula said, "this reactor lid covers enough poison to kill everyone on the planet if spread evenly. This is one reactor of four all balanced on a razors edge."

_Click, Whir!_

A metal rod began to move up and stopped a few seconds later.

"What was that?" Aang tensed.

"Control rod," Azula said as she leaned back on the concrete walkway at the edge of the shiny rods that lifted fuel bundles and control rods out of the reactor. She noticed they moved up and down slightly as the reactor operated. A motor drove a worm gear and lifted the rod out or in at a slow rate. This design aspect bothered her since in an emergency she had hoped they would fall in to halt the reaction not lazily lower into it. "They slow down the reactor when they get lowered and speed it up when they are raised. I have no idea why they seem to raise and lower by a few centimeters in that way. Perhaps some kind of automatic system tries to keep the reactor stable."

Aang relaxed partly because Azula the expert seemed to show no signs of anxiety, "why can't we shut this down then?"

"The plant has a standard Fire Nation coal fired steam generator to keep the cooling systems going if the power fails," Azula began to half crawl and half walk around the side of the reactor. "They have enough fuel for a week – maybe. The military probably wanted to walk away from this place and hope it kept going until they had all died or vanished." She gestured as if giving a tour.

_Whir! Click!_ Momentary pause!_ Clank!_ A loud dull metallic thud resonated in the space below the floor.

"What was that!" Aang shouted as the emergency sirens kicked in.

Azula grabbed Aang by his orange collar and yanked him along as she ran. "My guess? The control rods fell into the reactor." She had grown accustomed to the dull, quiet roar and grew alarmed as the roar slowly lowered in pitch.

"The Fire Nation was reckless and stupid to build this thing!" Aang yelled out in anger as Azula tossed him through the hatch that led to the surface.

"All of our hallmarks!" Azula let go of Aang who ran up the stairs behind her. She entered the _Reactor 3_ control room with a look of anger and fear.

Toph was the only person in the room and she looked fearful. "I only did a little earth bending! I tried to make my tea cup jump from the console into my hand."

"Tell God!" Azula turned the siren off: she knew she had a few minutes to keep everyone alive as she played with the dials that managed the control rods. A set of green lights which had flashed rapidly began to flash more slowly as she played with the controls.

Sokka and Suki had gone outside to take a walk and spend some time together but they rushed back in. "The big smokestack is spewing steam!" Sokka gulped for air, "a big cloud straight up!"

"I saw a flash and a flare lit up!" Suki added as she wrapped her parka around her for warmth and psychological comfort. "A big flame came out of the roof next to the big smokestack!"

A loud groan arose from the back of the room in the direction of the turbine hall. Azula noted that nothing lit up so assumed this might not be dangerous.

Sokka ran up to Azula, "anything I can do?"

Azula sat down at one of the chairs, "Toph bumped a control and shut down the reactor. It'll take a few minutes for it to come up to full power and I hope I remembered those settings properly or that nothing broke inside the reactor or the cooling system or turbine or my mind." Azula sat at the the chair and in her demanding way scolded herself for allowing people into the control room without thinking about the inherent carelessness of some members of the group.

The penguins had no knowledge of nuclear power but instinctively ran off in random directions along the banks of the warm water ponds when the plant emitted a low groan. Karo and Katara had taken a walk with a Geiger Counter to take measurements in the endless hunt for ionizing radiation and as the steam rose from the tall metal stack, the needle pegged itself in the red region of the graph, the device chirped like a cricket, and only slowly settled back.

Karo looked at Katara, "we didn't need our hair; did we?"

"I have my eyes on the white flames that just shot into the air." Katara wrapped her arm around Karo as a signal to walk quickly back toward the buildings. "Azula must be cooking again."

A half hour later, Azula tapped the dial that measured the heat in the core. It looked like the same gauge seen on naval ships and it did the same thing – measured heat. In this case, it told Azula that the reactor core had a temperature of 750 degrees Celsius. She hoped the gauge was reading wrong but had no faith in her luck. She tapped the glass but the dial refused to change its reading.

This meant trouble. The others had gone to a room at the farthest point from the reactor hall they could find and gone to sleep. Azula heard a creak and jumped off the seat.

"You need sleep," Sokka said kindly. "I have a knack for machinery so I can take over. I invented the submarine."

Azula sat back down, "well now that you've finished scaring me can you go outside and see if the flares are still lit? Just look, don't loiter!"

Azula had read all the available documentation but that included little theory and she had no idea if the Fire Nation engineers had built on a sound theoretical foundation or by trial and error. As she waited for Sokka, she slowly lowered the control rods into the reactor hoping the temperature would slowly lower. Control rods functioned to slow and stop the chain reaction – how this worked - she didn't fully understand. Azula could not be faulted for this for none of her teachers would have had any clearer idea of how the reactor worked. The Fire Nation had learned some theory but used trial and error to build the reactor so overlooked a serious flaw. The graphite in the pile kept the reaction going by acting to slow down the neutrons and other particles so they would strike more Uranium atoms, split them and thus allow the reactor to react – it moderated the reaction.

"Like torches," Sokka ran back into the control room. "What does that mean?"

Azula never had much trust in Fire Nation engineering – she swore under her breath and wished she had thirty more other physicists (preferably those who built this thing) and another thousand on call. "Sokka, we have a problem," Azula said with a cold calm betrayed by a tremor in her voice that made Sokka grow cold. "Get everyone up here." Azula returned to the controls as Sokka ran downstairs.

The group walked in yawning and looking deprived of sleep.

Azula wasted no time, "Toph go downstairs and walk across the reactor and tell me what you -uh – see." Azula pointed to Karo who scratched pimple on his face, "you help her."

"Whats going on?" Katara asked between yawns.

"Unless we get lucky, _Reactor 3_ will commit suicide in a few hours and take us with it." Azula replied as she watched Karo and Toph walk out onto the brightly lit reactor floor. "I hope you guys have nothing planned."

Aang tapped his glider as an extremely unnerved look crossed Azula's face, "I wanted this place destroyed!" He swept his hands in a grand commanding gesture. "While I was riding with Appa I saw the flash of steam this afternoon and I knew something had happened."

"You got your wish!" Azula said as she watched the temperature dial which had risen ever so slightly. She heard Toph and Karo stomping up the stairs as she wondered what she could do. "What did you see Toph?"

"I don't know," Toph said reluctantly as she felt some guilt for what seemed to be a very serious matter, "I don't know what I'm looking at but I saw dragon carvings at the bottom of those tubes that you were fiddling with."

"Damn Fire Nation idiots!" Azula yelled and clenched her fists to stem her anger as the full scale of the danger now struck her. The diagrams had indicated the control rods had graphite tips and in Azula's mind this had made some sense since graphite acted to lubricate the rods and prevent jamming of the mechanism. The tips had been carved into the shape of dragons for some odd reason with nothing to do with scientific or safety concerns - someone decided it looked appropriately _Fire Nation_ although no one would ever see them. The shape didn't make for problems but the fact the tips had fallen into the reactor made for huge complications.

Katara coughed, "what's the bad news?"

"I worried about a massive radiation leak if the Avatar destroyed this place. Like a flu virus in an old age home, radiation gets into everything and everyone." Azula said with her trademark gallows humor. "We can't control the reactor because the system that does that busted so the reactor is overheating. We have a massive radiation leak because the reactor is spewing its radioactive steam in a desperate attempt to ward off self destruction." Azula looked at Aang half expecting a reprimand, "I think we're safe enough inside this building but I would imagine we will see lots of dead penguins outside."

"What about Appa!" Aang screamed in Azula's face. "I left him in one of the buildings outside."

Azula said nothing and looked blank: she hadn't thought of that. "Bigger animals should tolerate such poisoning much better than small ones. We have to leave – now! The Southern Water Tribe must be warned quickly. If they are lucky then the winds will blow out to sea, but nothing about this place makes me confident in my predictions." Azula looked down at the ground for a moment.

A loud growl followed by a series of bangs like the thuds of a war drum deafened everyone in the room. A flaw in the reactor design became quite clear as Azula watched the temperature indicator rise a notch. The sealed reactor could not expand as it heated up so it would explode suddenly and then they would all die.

"Run!" Azula pushed Aang almost on his hindquarters. "If we don't go now we won't ever leave – we will be manning this place forever!"

Azula rushed out behind her friends not because she lacked some enlightened self interest but because she noticed the temperature gauge move a tiny amount upward.

"Stay together and follow me!" Aang shouted as they hit the base of the stairs.

Katara kept her eye on Toph as they rushed down the hallway. The lights remained on and Katara thought that somehow thermonuclear destruction would have more flickering lights, pyrotechnics with loud sound effects. Aang blasted the door out right off its hinges.

Azula felt a shock like that of an earthquake and knew they had no chance.

She could imagine the events unfolding in her mind's eye. The reactor ruptured in a huge steam explosion. The huge reactor lid she had stood on the day before flew into the air tearing a gash in the ceiling and then falling into the reactor vessel. This lid weighed more than some ships and when it hit the reactor then the reactor would collapse through the bottom of the vessel and the air would reach the fuel and graphite.

"We're dead!" Azula gasped as she heard the hissing thumps of hot graphite and fuel hitting the ground.

I hope no one takes this seriously but I while wiring this I did research much about nuclear technology The kind of reactor I imaged was the simplest a steam aged nation could engineer. That they made this reality was not Azula's fault.

I think a civilization that had Victorian technologies could figure out nuclear fission. A nation at at war can achieve many things if they are deluded into believing that the ne discovery would aid them in the War. The kind of reactor and the kind of safety systems would also reflect this. Azula couyld not have expected to have understood this because she lacked the theoretical understanding.

In the Avatar world no one had been stupid enough to make a nuclear reactor.

The GPWR or Graphite High Pressure Water Reactor came out of decades of trial and error and even then they had flaws.


	3. Chapter 3

**Tales of Henwa Island**

**Chapter 3**

Azula cried out for Karo, "Karo!"

Karo came pelting down the hall that led away from the control room and nearly took his head off when he collided with the heavy metal frame of the door. "What!"

"The reactor blew up?" Azula wiped the sleep from her eyes.

Karo cursed the interior decorator that thought red lights would provide proper illumination and sat down next to Azula, "you were drooling and mumbling at the control desk so you must have had a bad dream." Karo stretched in his red night robe and scratched his stomach. "I saw you asleep when I came up to use the washroom. The one on the first level has run out of bog rolls and I have no idea where they are kept."

Azula looked at Karo with some disbelief, but evidence suggested the nuclear plant remained intact. "I had a dream where _Reactor 3_ blew up and poisoned all of us."

"Get some sleep," Karo said kindly, "you are exhausted and need a good night's rest."

"Do you know how to operate a nuclear reactor?" Azula looked at Karo doubtfully, "to begin with, what is the temperature inside the core?"

Karo looked at the dial, "650 degrees Celsius or_ Norm_?"

"What do you do if you notice the temperature in the core suddenly rising?" Azula stifled a yawn with her hand.

"Lower the control rods – Fig 3 – into the reactor," Karo said as if answering a teacher's question, "then panic, wet myself, receive the required fatal amount of radiation, catch fire and die. In other words:_ bend over and kiss my ass goodbye_."

"Good night!" Azula waved in farewell, "you have a good understanding of the basic problem." Azula stomped off down the hall toward the stairs and made her way to the place they had chosen to use as their temporary quarters. Azula had picked a first floor room behind a thick, concrete bulkhead since it promised some protection for a few moments from any blast of radiation. The room had served as an office for some scientist but except for a desk made of heavy oak, had been stripped by the workers when the plant was abandoned.

Karo had very little to do as he watched the dials remain still, the pattern of lights remain the same and when he looked out into the brightly lit reactor hall with the four reactors; nothing moved. Karo knew he had nothing he could do if the reactor decided to blow up. He didn't know much about nuclear science but it seemed to him that this plant had operated for years without a problem. He knew reactor contained the most deadly toxins ever seen on Earth and yet much about this new kind of power drew Karo's interest. He lacked the scientific acumen of Azula but he realized civilization had exploited many things science did not fully understand. He ate rice bred from thousands of generations of rice plants to have the desirable characteristics desired by sushi chefs. No one knew how a living thing like a rice plant kept track of these traits and yet farmers could produce a consistent product. Karo put his hands behind his head and listened to rhythm of the plant as the turbines spun generators and pumps moved water from the hot to cold sides of the reactor.

Karo had common sense and he wouldn't want a nuclear plant built near inhabited areas yet he didn't see much of a problem building them in sparsely inhabited parts of the world with transmission links to their customers. The reactor allowed the mass production of energy in the same way factories allowed the production of nuts and bolts or cloth in vast amounts. The economics of such a plant struck Karo as attractive. Karo realized Aang had decided squarely against the use of this place and the voice of a newspaper cartoonist with an economics degree had no pull.

* * *

Sokka and Suki found Karo asleep on the gray metal control console drooling and mumbling. Suki gently shook him until he woke up.

Karo stirred and yawned, "another day, no solutions and no answers?"

"We need the engineers that ran this place," Sokka sat on the other seat.

Karo stretched to rid himself of a crick in his back. "This place helped the Fire Nation build up their arsenal of weapons and nearly destroyed the world. We won't find the scientists because _they_ don't want to be found." Karo did a few twists to limber up. "Would you want to take responsibility for _this_? Think of the blood on your hands and all the damage, expense and worry you have caused future generations. The Fire Nation airship will return in three days and I half expect they will retrieve us, the experts will study our notes and return here in the spring when it's easier to work."

Suki leaned against the wall, "what will Aang do?"

"He will probably wipe out this place in a cataclysm of all the elements," Karo had heard Azula's objections but she could not go against the Avatar. "I have no idea if he will succeed. Azula doesn't like Aang's plan and has spoken out against it on many occasions."

"I live a few days sail from here and the prevailing winds blow that way." Suki said with concern in her voice.

"The initial blast of radioactive particles would probably render parts of your island facing south uninhabitable for a lifetime," Azula stomped up the stairs, "but maybe we should wipe this place out and take the damage. It won't look pretty, but history is the story of massive cockups made by people not fully understanding what they were doing. The Avatar wants to destroy this place and he doesn't want to wait. He doesn't want to listen to scientific opinions and doesn't believe in mine. I have opinions but to be honest; they are not well informed. I didn't specialize in nuclear physics and even those at Ba Sing Se University who did; would not have a much better understanding of things than I do. I'm tired, fed up and want to go home."

"What will Aang do? Suki trembled "I mean has he got a specific plan?"

Azula leaned against the window. "I don't know exactly but I would imagine Aang will open a huge hole in the earth and then shove the whole complex into it. He would then fill the hole with more earth and then wait. With no power and from the melting of the permafrost, the reactor room will flood and the reactors will explode in a steam explosion. The radioactive fuel and steam will erupt through cracks in the rock and spew in the air like geysers. This could go on for weeks or months and would be quite violent. It would not be advisable to stand on the island or sail near it." Azula sounded resigned to this plan and despite her normal self confidence, she sounded defeated. "I told Aang a few minutes ago that without the luxury of time and given our lack of any real knowledge – we should destroy this place. Katara and Toph have already begun the work by draining those ponds outside to remove as much water as possible from the site."

Katara had never done a more sickening or sad task in her life but the ponds of warm water were drained. She could see the drain pipes at the bottom of the white, mineral encrusted pool. Strangely enough, this mineral water might have drawn tourists to enjoy a good soak if found in a nice alpine environment and not a cold desert. She walked up the control room stairs and sat quietly in a corner. Toph felt no better but she had built a berm to keep the sea away from what she called the grave. She had made a huge hole – deeper than the stack of the plant and now she felt exhausted.

Aang returned to the control room having meditated and then taken a walk clear around the plant. He felt even worse. The winds would take the radioactive particles directly to the North if they got lucky. He had hoped to spare Kyoshi Island but they would have to fly fast and fly hard to warn everyone. He had his glider and looked down at the ground. He had a plan but like any real world plan; he had to make real world sacrifices.

"Collect your things," Aang said sadly, "I imagine Azula told you and you have been here for the last hour or so."

"What now?" Azula asked as she grabbed Karo's arm gently and they began walking toward the stairs.

"We destroy this place and leave," Aang felt Katara hug him. "I will meet you at the workshop to the south where I have been keeping Appa."

"What will happened if this plan doesn't work?" Katara asked Azula.

Azula didn't bother looking back, "we could all die on this rock. Don't bother writing a will because no one will ever visit this place in our lifetimes."

Sokka place his hand on the backs of Suki and Toph.

"Kyoshi Island will become a ghost town," Suki wept as she spoke.

"Aang knows," Sokka said quietly as they reached the bottom of the stairs. He had found this place a wonder of engineering and a crypt and knew why the world had to be rid of it and yet people who had never seen it would suffer the most. "The Southern Air Temple where he grew up will also be affected."

Azula and Karo stood together beside Appa. The plan had no use for fire benders and they had no choice but to wait. Toph and Aang went through some exercises. They stood in the open, cold air and motioned over and ever. They had to time this perfectly and even at that Azula knew everyone would receive radiation exposure. Aang and Toph had to work together and work quickly; then hope the reactors gave them a few minutes to escape before committing thermonuclear suicide.

Katara sat on Appa and held his reins while Sokka and Suki tethered their supplies and belongings to the saddle.

The Sun at high noon only poked above the horizon. The sky was inky dark blue and clear, the steam from the plant rose above the island and took a lazy easterly course over the sea.

Azula and Karo climbed into Appa and sat quietly in the saddle.

Aang and Toph began the dance in unison. A fifty meter slab of rock and permafrost broke free from the crust as Aang and Toph worked together. Electric lines snapped with a sharp snap and blue sparks flew over the transformer yard, lights went out and everything became darker. Azula looked on wondering if they had seconds or minutes or no time at all. Dust and ice shards flew into the air as both earth benders pulled the slab forward. Toph held her hands in the direction of the hole and Aang slid the huge slab forward. Some kind of liquified gas kept in a high pressure storage cylinder released its contents and white mist erupted from the back of the plant.

Azula knew that tank held the mixture of inert gas to keep the graphite from catching fire. Once that failed, they had a limited time until oxygen from the air breached the reactor core and started a fire. The whole complex stood over the hole in a cloud of dust for a moment.

Toph made a rapid motion with her hands and then lowered them. At the same time Karo heard a series of pops and a loud crunch as the turbine self destructed and the flywheel flew apart.

As soon as the stack vanished; Aang made a motion and a huge mass of rubble washed over the hole like a wave making a roar as it spilled into the hole. The cloud of acrid dust came over the group.

Aang stood with a calm expression. Toph had a healthier respect for Azula's words and rushed for the saddle.

"Aang!" Azula yelled from the saddle, "get in here or you won't need to leave, you will be staying here forever!"

A loud explosion like the firing of a huge cannon filled the air. Puffs of dust rose up from the reactor followed by white hot plumes of gas that looked like road flares. It sounded like the hissing of a demonic geyser.

"If ever you wanted to shout 'yip! yip!' now would be the time!" Azula grabbed Aang's by his hand and dragged him into the saddle. Appa took off heading south as Aang settled down in the saddle.

"Did it work?" Aang asked as he struggled for breath.

Azula held his head down, "not very well." Azula imagined what had taken place and hoped they could find cover over the largely flat and uninteresting landscape of _Nekoyasha Island_. Distance mattered now – the more air between Appa and the reactor site, the better off they were.

Everyone ducked when they heard a ballistic crack and shock-wave. Appa jolted in air but Sokka kept him steady enough so as not to spill his passengers. Azula had seen a bright white flash followed by a less intense orange flame. She saw the shock wave leaving the reactor site in a huge circle, kicking up dust and snow as it did so. She felt terrified. She had imagined witnessing this in her dream. A red hot fuel rod flew over Appa as he flew. Azula could hear it hiss as it sailed ten meters over their heads. Azula found that less impressive than the fact they now had traveled five or more kilometers and the reactor had ejected a fuel rod that weighed a ton. Sokka flew Appa as close to the surface and tried to keep the terrified beast under control.

Azula knew what had happened; an abundance of water had turned to steam. She had heard of volcanoes having mild eruptions turned into cataclysms because the magma chamber had met up with the huge reservoir of ocean water. Such blasts created explosions considered the greatest ever witnessed on Earth. The reactor blast in no way compared to these in sheer energy but the steam had destroyed the mount of rubble and ejected the components of the reactor into the air.

Aang found himself worried when Azula went quiet. "I thought it would work!"

"Quite frankly at this time, I don't give a flying..." Azula had his own awful feelings to dwell on and decided recriminations would do no good. "We need to warn people." She leaned over to Karo, "How long will it take you to reach your village?"

"Six hours," Sokka said gently.

As the group traveled to the Southern Water Tribe village, Azula had some fairly awful things to think about. She had no grave concern about the radiation levels inside the old reactor plant since no measures indicated levels too far beyond those found in nature and the engineers had shielded things fairly well. A week in a pub with bad smokers would have probably posed more of a threat to a person's well being. _But how much of a risk did the blast pose_? She had seen a fuel rod – radioactive in the extreme – fly from the heart of the reactor directly over their heads. The reactor had exploded in front of them. She had no signs of a radioactive sunburn but that meant little.

She didn't notice when Appa landed directly in front of the house of Master Pakku and Gran Gran (whatever her name was). She looked out of the saddle and realized she had to explain what had taken place in their homeland. She hoped they were a gentle and understanding people with a fondness for radiation but a large seal skin told a different story. The old but still clever Master Pakku looked at the motley crew in Appa's saddle.

Karo looked at the Fire Nation clothes Azula and he wore and wondered if having a Fire Nation nuclear facility fly apart might bring out the Water Tribe mob with torches and grappling hooks. Karo turned to Azula to share his thoughts as she sank back into the saddle, "you intend to explain to these people that the Avatar blew up a nuclear power plant built by the Fire Nation on their tribal homeland?" He whispered with a dry mouth as he looked around. "Did I tell you I love you?"

Azula scowled, "well that doesn't help me now!"

"When you die with the words 'burn the witch' ringing in your ears, then remember what I said," Karo patted her shoulder. "We can blame the Avatar for this one. We give him one point for ending the War and then a five game suspension for blowing up a reactor."

"Get up!" Azula said as she stood up. "Some days I wish I could use you as a human shield."

Azula put her arm around Karo as Toph, Suki, Aang and Katara climbed out of the saddle. Sokka had long run up to hug Gran Gran and Master Pakku. Azula stood up as she imagined Zuko would after he had done something unbelievably stupid and cleared his throat. "Attention people of the Southern Water Tribe!" Azula began with a loud and a commanding voice but she felt her feet grow weak and she could feel her knees shaking. "How many of you recall the mysterious Fire Nation project at _Nekoyasha Island_ and..." Azula didn't understand where the spears tipped with the teeth of whales came from but they flew at her as she pushed Karo down to the floor of the saddle.

"I think they remember..." Karo lay flat on the floor of the saddle.

"They wouldn't greet my brother in such a manner," Azula lay flat beside Karo hoping somewhere Katara was sucking up for them.

"Zuko has an extra charisma roll on the 'admit to destroying the environment' speech."

Another spear sailed over both their heads and landed in the snow with a dull thud.

"We should let the Avatar explain this," Karo had his hands over his head as if that would defend his skull against a Water Tribe spear.

"My brother and I were taken prisoner there," an elderly man with a hoarse voice yelled out from the crown assembled to greet the Avatar. "He died there of blood cancer and I turned into a weak old man. I never forgave the Fire Nation and I don't need to hear the words of the dishonored princess!"

"A few hours ago, we had a minor mishap," Karo began but Azula poked him with her left shoulder.

"Minor mishap!" Azula rasped so Karo could hear her but the angry mob could not. "We blew the reactor to Kingdom Come and probably poisoned every living thing on that island."

Karo looked at Azula, "you want to tell them that!" Karo breathed out, looked overthe saddle and watched the fog rise up as Katara gestured. "We have to ease them into this. Like when you tell someone with a festering boil that he may have a blemish – where the hell are all the others?"

Katara spoke up, "I apologize but many people here have not forgiven your homeland. My grandmother is a great healer! She asks that you two take off _all_ your clothes because they carry the poison."

"It's cold out and..." Karo began and point to Azula, "I've seen her naked."

"Just do it! We all have to do it!" Katara yelled out impatiently, "Azula will you follow me and Karo will you follow Sokka."

Azula and Karo began to cautiously undress.

"Why?" Karo asked as he felt the cold whip through his boxers. "They will see my back acne," he whispered to Azula.

"I could put a braid in my armpit hair," Azula whispered to Karo as they watched the crowd below them. "If I knew they were going to execute me in the nude I would have shaved my pits and done something about my eyebrows."

"Gran gran says you carry _the poison_ on your clothes and skin and it could make you sick!" Katara yelled impatiently.

"Hey!" Karo protested loudly, "Would you scrub a shiny carriage like that when cleaning it?"

* * *

Sokka sat next to Karo and scrubbed his hair, "sorry but Gran Gran was quite clear; we have to scrub down with these hard sponges." Karo never drank but Gran Gran told everyone to take the _medicine_ she offered. The Water Tribe had made a brew out of seaweed and distilled it into a pale green liquid and Gran Gran claimed it would help protect them against the harshest effects of the poison. Karo almost choked on it, but soon began to relax in the large porcelain tub kept warm by a small fire lit under it.

The Water Tribe had taken his clothes and all their belongings to clean them. The reason for bathing nude with Sokka and Aang amounted to allowing each of the men to scrub each other down and remove any of the_ poison _as Gran Gran called it off their skin. The water was pleasantly warm and soapy and yet Karo felt a bit out of place as he scrubbed Aang's back. Whale oil lamps and a fire kept the room lit and the ice and snow of the walls gave it a nice light.

Karo scrubbed Aang and while Aang had no hair, this didn't make the task of sitting in a Water Tribe bath with two other men and parka dressed attendants coming to and fro with fresh warm water any easier.

Azula had better things to do than sit in a dimly lit bath. The Southern Water Tribe had one wireless operator and Azula had many messages to send to the Fire Nation, Kyoshi Island and Ba Sing Se University and its hive of physicists.

"Katara scrubbed Azula's back, "can you raise your arms?" Azula raised her arms reluctantly while Katara made a 'eek' sound when she saw her armpit hair.

"How did the Gran Gran learn how to decontaminate radiation?" Azula asked Katara. They sat in a similar bath as the guys with whale oil lights and a dim fire. The Water Tribe attendants kept the tile lined bath warm with a steady jugs of soapy hot water and in other circumstances Azula would find it pleasant. "We have to let the world know. Of course the small airship we took couldn't take a powerful enough transmitter because of the size and weight so they promised us a proper long distance one on the next airship – glad they thought it essential!"

Toph and Suki scrubbed each other. Those watching from afar might have thought this very cute to watch cute girls scrubbing each other but the soap contained a bitter and acrid ingredient that burned the skin and the sponges cut the skin. Everyone felt sore and raw. The medicine didn't help. It was some kind of cough syrup like alcohol based concoction made of seaweed and god knew what else. It made everyone want to vomit but Gran Gran warned too much could cause rashes although the nausea limited the amount anyone was willing to take.

* * *

Karo felt like a fish; cold and scaled. The 'soap' the Water Tribe used came out of the same school as their medicine – it had harsh and unanticipated effects on those who used it. Karo scratched his itchy face and tried to make sense of his surrounding. The Water Tribe had assigned him these quarters and he had woken up in mid morning if the dim light from outside offered any clue. He had a pile of his clothing set inside a neat pelt and proceed to dress himself for another day of not quite having a clue what was going on. He unfurled his sleeping bag wondering what soft and dyed blue animal had given up its all to make his nude hide comfortable. He put his boxers on while trying to remain quiet to let Sokka sleep in.

Sokka slept in one corner enjoying the relative warmth of his sleeping cocoon. Aang woke up a few hours before Karo and apologetically stepped on him in the dark – Aang had grave concerns about Appa and wished to be with his sky bison. Karo found a large hide bag with his clothes and possessions now all nicely cleaned and laundered. He dug out fresh boxers and put them on as a hedge against the cold. In spite of the arctic climate, the inside of the igloos proved rather warm. Karo felt through his possessions to find his glasses and found them with slightly bent frames but still providing workable vision.

"Crap!" Karo shivered in the cold as Suki tucked her head through the seal pelts that served as a door.

"Good morning - sorry," Suki apologized and stood proudly in her delicate Water Tribe parka and clothes. "I don't want to wake up Azula because I know her temper."

"Oh?" Karo asked, "she tired?"

"She's still sleeping." Suki answered back. "What about my husband and Aang?"

"Aang and I left the bath when the pain from the skin abrasions set in and we went to bed, Sokka came in a few minutes later. Aang left early this morning to check on Appa and take care of him. Sokka is still a lump in his sleeping bag." Karo looked over the two sleeping bags. Karo struggled into his clothes tryingto keep the pain from his skin to a minimum as he dressed, "Why do we need Azula? What's it all about?"

"Last night the wireless operator and Master Pakku spent half the night sending out messages to all corners of the Earth," Suki said as she held out the hastily written telegraph on a piece of canary yellow paper. "Kyoshi Island has begun evacuating all of our people from the endangered part of the island. They have diverted the airship Roku to land here and have sent out a navy patrol to investigate – from a distance of course."

"That's good," Karo shuffled the paper from hand to hand as he put on his gold trimmed Fire Nation vest. He read the telegram to himself and looked sternly at Suki. "Rock, paper scissors for who wakes up Azula?"

"God!" Karo whispered to Suki, "it smells like public transit in here."

"Why do you think I woke up and left." Suki said quietly, "Water Tribe homes all smell the same."

Karo looked around having lost two of three rounds of rock, paper scissors as Suki guided him to Azula's sleeping bag.

"Azula Hairy Pitted Amazon Queen," Katara muttered as she stirred in her sleeping bag, "your husband wants to see you."

Karo stood still for a moment. "Azula?" Karo whispered, "We have telegrams."

Azula looked up at Karo, "I feel like death and I have a headache that could paralyze Appa." Azula stirred and began to wriggle out of the blue sleeping bag.

Katara moaned and waved for them to leave.

"Oh Spirit of Roku!" Azula stood up in her night robe, "I need to order new skin! At least it distracts me from the headache."

Suki and Karo nodded in sympathy.

"I have to staunch the bleeding and put some fresh clothes," Azula told Karo. "I see the kind Water Tribe ladies left cleanly laundered packages of our things on our beds so I'll be as quick as I can – unless my skin decides to fall off."

Azula emerged a few minutes later dressed and ready if not willing for the day ahead. "Toph left earlier this morning: where did she go?"

"She got up with me and went with Master Pakku to check wind directions," Suki limped in rhythm tih the other two and all three walked slowly through the igloos and meandering paths of the village as they made their way for the main hall of the Water Tribe Village. The Main Hall served as the meeting place, a restaurant where one could obtain tea and a place to sit and talk. "Toph has spent the last few days unable to earth bending so she also went to get some practice."

Karo had a pot of strong tea made by the matron who manned the hall during the day. He insisted on the extra strong type and began pouring it out to Azula hoping she would read the telegram and answer it using her knowledge of the site they had visited on_ Nekoyasha Island_. He found the hall a neat idea since it combined the best properties of a pub and served as a public space where most public spaces caused frost bite. A few fishermen in the far corner by the long counter worked by the matron talked quietly among themselves.

Karo supplied Azula with a pad of paper and Suki read the telegrams and Azula drank tea. Azula listened and through her headache tried to work out what kind of supplies she needed.

Azula stood up and picked up a pelt stretching on a round wooden hoop. "We need these!"

"Pelts?" Suki looked at Azula from behind the telegrams.

"Follow me please," Azula held up a silver pelt with charcoal spots. "We could take these hoops and stick paper on them and put something sticky like honey or tree sap on the paper. We could stick them on a pole stuck in the snow or ground and the sticky stuff would catch any particles blowing in the wind." She moved her hand over the pelt pantomiming her words."At least we could run a Gieger Counter over the surface and have more of a clue what we're facing."

"We don't have a Geiger thing," Suki said.

"We make a shopping list and ask for a few," Azula said as she put the pelt on the seat next to her. "if we need honey or paper then add that."

"What about that green icky stuff?" Karo asked.

Azula snickered, "Gran Gran's special elixir? You may not want too much tincture of seaweed because it will poison you. I have no idea what it could do for radiation exposure but you can buy it for thyroid health under half a dozen different names – usually for two silver. Mai had a thyroid problem and her doctor prescribed something like it." Azula tapped her fingers on the crude wooden table. "I keep wondering how much of what they had us do was science and how much just Water Tribe paranoia. I find it difficult to believe the Southern Water Tribe knows more about nuclear disasters than anyone else. Master Pakku doesn't publish in the journals. You can't convince me they know these things because of ancient tribal wisdom either. What did they do? Pile up whale blubber in a pile and have it go critical? Of course I don't know what the Fire Nation did to the locals either so – its a mystery."

* * *

Sokka woke up after Karo left and decided to take a long walk around the village and the sights beyond it. He had known this place all his like and loved it – much as Suki loved Kyoshi Island. Even the Fire Nation failed to destroy it and for all the bleakness; he took comfort in the fact the village had always remained. The winds did blow in a direction away from their village but toward Kyoshi Island. He worried more about the massive leaks which must exist below the sea level and would take radioactive poison out through splits in the rock.

Sokka knew common sense physics very well. The heat of the reactor reached the temperature no material could stand. The graphite like the coal from which it came would burn white hot and destroy any remaining metal. The mass of superheated metal posed a huge problem since that would drive water and steam out along with the poisons made in the reactor. Fuel rod storage pools would burst and release their contents and marine life would ingest it. Smaller things would eat bigger things and from fish to seal to whale would come an accumulation of poison which would make traditional foods impossible to eat. Marine life moved around the Southern Sea so within a few days, no one would have any idea if they had safe food or toxic food.

Toph found him sitting on a rock outcrop.

"The Fire Nation has plans to send supplies to help us," Toph doubted they could do much except maybe measure levels of radiation as a warning. "They plan to send the Roku here and survey the site."

"We're about six hundred clicks from the site, Sokka let his legs dangle over the edge of the large gray rock escarpment. "Winds don't blow from there but our food supply can swim from there. We won't die but our way of life will end. We make everything from the sea from our clothing to our food. When we can't live off the sea then we're not Water Tribe. We may as well move to Henwa Island and live in brick houses with running water and eat mutton." Sokka stuck his tongue out at that prospect. "They make it look fancy but they make things from wheat, not rice, tree fruit and not sea plants. They use olive oil not seal fat to cook and it just isn't us."

Aang walked quietly up to the rock outcrop overlooking the village in a parka holding his glider. He sat next to Toph.

"How's Appa?" Sokka asked.

"He's fine and the village gave him a bath so he smells fresh," Aang looked out over the bleak landscaping. "What was I thinking? As the Avatar I have to preserve harmony and yet I took out a huge part of the planet. I thought such dangerous technology ought not to fall into the hands of anyone. It never occurred to me that the Princess of the Fire Nation – a power mad, deluded should might actually be right."

Sokka leaned forward, "I don't remember any tradition that said the Avatar had to be perfect – a flaw in the plan?" He placed his hands on his lap and looked out over the village. "Never underestimate Azula – I still find her a very scary lady – but she's smarter than all of us put together."

"I never thought to take her at her word," Aang said distressingly. "I thought Azula would lie because she wanted the power of that place. I never thought she had our best interests at heart or that she was worth listening to."

Toph picked up a small rock and tossed in her hand. "She doesn't lie. She has plenty of flaws. She's a trifle sadistic, she's sarcastic, rude, cynical and utterly insufferable at times but when it comes to science; she doesn't lie." Toph let the pebble fall off the escarpment. "You two had a painful past so it never occurred to you to trust her and I don't blame you. She nearly killed you and you never forgave her for all your suffering so – we faced an impossible situation we couldn't solve."

Azula trudged toward the escarpment cursing life, her skin, the Water Tribe, gravity, the neutron and anything she could thing had wronged her in the past several lives. She held up a post and in her other hand had a wooden hoop with sticky yellow goo smeared on it. She stood out because she wore her Fire Nation robes and not the blue, delicately crafted parkas everyone else donned as a hedge against the cold. Toph found her tirades amusing while Sokka and Aang wondered what she could be up to.

"What brings you up here?" Azula pushed a wooden pole into the hard icy snow.

Sokka looked at Azula, "what is that?"

Azula began to tie the hoop down to the pole with a piece of sealskin, "piece of paper with honey all over it. With any luck we will have some way of measuring radioactive particles flowing in the wind." She looked over at the group. "Why did you all gather on this bleak, hell worn spot?"

Aang walked up to Azula with his glider and stared at her for several moments, "I never forgave you for what you did in the caverns of Ba Sing Se."

"A cavern?" Azula perked up, "yes! You had the right idea, the wrong material and wrong method." Azula looked at Aang who looked at Azula with grave concern and confusion. "That could work if needed but it would be the most difficult civil engineering project ever conceived."

Sokka and Toph stood up and approached Azula.

"I wanted to say I forgive you." Aang said with some confusion in his voice.

Azula kissed Aang on the forehead then winced, "we will forget about that but you made me realize a way to fix this!" Azula turned to Toph, "you earth benders can shape stone but stone has flaws, cracks and imperfections. Ba Sing Se used finished stone, mortared blocks and concrete for its walls because – you see – you can control the characteristics of concrete. This made it difficult to breech. Concrete has progressed so we now have reinforced concrete, concrete that sets underwater and many varieties for bridges, dams and buildings. Don't you get it! We can't bury the reactor underground but we could encase it in a thick concrete vault – a man made cavern!"

"That would be huge!" Toph whistled.

"We would need a box with a bottom, sides and roof." Azula began to pace, "we would have to leave openings for heat to escape but we could seal the site. In time when it cooled off, we could fill it up with sand and seal it up completely." Azula looked to Aang, "you'd have to sell this to every nation. We will need many thousands of workers, engineers and staff to supply everyone. No one nation could build this thing, but all of us just might."

* * *

Two days later, the _Roku_ sailed over the village. Karo knew it had arrived when the thunder of its massive diesel engines vibrated the coarsely built wooden table and sent his tea sliding across the table. The team melted a small hole in the floor and ruined Karo's mid morning tea. The white haired matron of the lodge gave him an evil look as she rushed outside to see the silver, cigar shaped wonder of the new age as it landed outside the village.

Karo sat at the table with a pencil and sheets of paper trying his best to draw what Azula termed a sarcophagus – a tomb meant to stand forever. He had no idea if his drawings would even approach the final engineering drawings but Azula wanted it as a visual aid. The lodge was deserted and as the_ Roku_ flew over and descended; it forced Karo to grasp his papers to keep them from falling off the floor. Karo rolled them up and decided to watch the _Roku_ land. The Southern Water Tribe had kept him well fed – even if he hated anything remotely related to seal. They had kept him clean and warm and yet he longed for the contact with the outside world the _Roku's_ crew promised.

Azula wanted information. She had spent the last three days at the weak end of a wire telegraph connection and she had no news on the scope of the accident, the nature of the effort to survey it and she had no news from the Fire Nation about the intent of the plant or the identity of the missing scientists.

Azula watched from afar as the crew of the _Roku_ dropped lines with anchors and the ship slowed, stopped and began descend on a snowy field. The control car wheel touched the ground and then the engines slowly slowed to a stop. The huge silver dirigible hung silently for a moment. The passenger hatch behind the control car opened and thumped onto the snow.

Zuko held Anya and stepped out from the _Roku_ along with Mai. Two guards who did not have spears for diplomatic reasons stepped out behind the royal family and the party walked straight for Azula. The Southern Water Tribe waved and began a song of welcome. Fire Lord Zuko waved back but approached Azula.

"I have some very bad news," Zuko said quietly as he stood in front of Azula with a stricken look on his face as he motioned with his hand. A guard came forward with a large red book of the kind used to hold survey maps and handed it to Azula.

Azula took the book, "what does this contain?"

"We sent a navy autogyro from the _Roku_ to fly over the site yesterday. The crew flew at about three thousand meters and came back with the first shots of the site of the accident." Zuko said quietly. "We took photographs and made measurements. The radiation levels over the site are maybe a hundred thousand times greater than normal. Even over this village, the levels are maybe ten times higher." Zuko shook his head.

Azula sat in the main lodge with Karo next to her. She lifted open the cover of the book with the caution of a brain surgeon. The _Roku_ had the capacity for two autogyros – aircraft that flew on rotors but used a propeller to drive them forward – and to his credit Zuko had used them to full advantage to survey the site. The book reeked of photographic print solution and she looked at the first print. The date and time showed it was taken mid morning the previous day but the survey cameras used captured extraordinary detail.

She let the full impact settle in. The reactor had blown a cone shaped hole in the ground about five hundred meters across – twice the size of the complex. That plate showed little detail. She flipped the page to the next plate and the sheer scale of the damage shocked even the war hardened Azula.

Karo took a look and merely whistled and said, "wow!"

"You can see the pieces of graphite blown out of the reactor and they litter the ground. "Azula pointed at the black pieces – the size of large rocks scattered randomly over the flat ground. "I see spent fuel rods on the ground. This explosion hurled one of those at us at five clicks? Look!" You can see the reactor lid! The explosion threw it out of the pit, but it slid partway back in under its own weight. Two thousand tons flung out of the pit like a golf-ball."

She flipped the page. She held out little hope of seeing the core of any of the reactors. The pit looked like an angry volcano but white steam and black smoke obscured a view of the bottom regardless of how detailed the photographs were.

"I hope they didn't take their time capturing these pictures!" Azula shivered. She picked up the magnifying glass she had placed on the seat next to her. "Do you see those dots at the bottom of the pit?"

Azula handed the glass to Karo who nodded as he looked, "the white dots?"

"Overheating reactor rods still in the reactor." Azula shook her head. "Deadly in the extreme. I didn't actually expect to see them because of the smoke and steam. I half expected them to be buried in rubble like the rest of the _Reactor Hall_. My word! You can see crushed steam tubes all over the bottom of the pit and the roof of the _Reactor Hall_ is completely gone!" She looked at the awful sight, "and we were nearly dead. The rooms off the hall got pulverized into dust, the roof of the waste ponds has pancaked completely flat and the amount of ruin is unbelievable."

"What do you think caused all this damage?" Karo found the sight of the glowing dots in the floor of the crater oddly compelling.

"Steam, just steam," Azula looked over the picture entirely ignoring Zuko as he walked into the lodge. "The covering of earth didn't act as a shield, it acted as a trigger. The reactors boiled off huge amounts of steam and gave off heat. Gases built up and the pressure increased so quickly that the earth on top simply got blown off."

"How bad is it?" Zuko asked as he sat down and offered Azula and Karo a cup of tea.

"Bad beyond belief." Azula said bluntly. "If you look closely you can see not one but two patterns of white dots under the rubble and broken pieces at the base of the crater. Reactor 2 and 3 have begun to melt down. I would imagine units 1 and 4 have also started to self destruct but they are buried under rubble and we can't see the exposed cores. Send your wife and Anya home!"

Zuko wore a look of shock and horror, "that bad?"

"You have a keen mind," Azula turned the book around. "What don't you see?"

Zuko flipped back and forth among the pictures. "The pit's far below sea level and yet I see no sea water in the pit."

Azula nodded, "You see many fires in the pit and the smoke carries radioactivity into the wind and the winds blow it to inhabited areas. The fires will eventually go out when they have no more fuel. We face an even bigger problem: you can see the smoke from fires and white steam but no water. The water from the sea is boiling away faster than it is draining into the pit which means more radiation leeching out into the sea and poisoning it. This may go on for years, decades even." Azula drew her hands to outline the structure of the reactor room basement. "When they built this place, they filled the spaces between the reactor containers with sand. If we have any luck and the reactors melt down, perhaps they may melt the sand and make a kind of glass mixture which could cool down the whole site enough to allow work to fix this.

The next shot showed the remains of the site. The ponds so beloved by the penguins had garbage filling them. Steel trusses, broken bits of equipment, rocks and reactor rubble filled them as if a giant scrapyard magnet had dumped its load into them. The city looked intact but dead and very likely forever uninhabitable.

Aang sat next to Zuko and took off his parka to reveal his traditional Air Nomad clothes "I had a telegram from the small group rebuilding the Air Nomad Temple. They want to know if they should leave. What should I tell them?"

Zuko handed the book of photographic plates to Aang, "How many people live there?"

"Thirty one."

Azula sighed, "Tell them the situation is grave and send them to the Northern Air Temple."

"I'll send a ship for them." Zuko shook his head.

"You said you had a solution," Aang said to Azula.

Azula scratched her head and wondered if Aang wanted to challenge or chastise her in front of everyone as a show of his authority. Azula decided to ignore his tone and answer the question. "The Vault may still be possible but we need engineers and people willing to work."

"The Vault?" Zuko tapped the book.

"A massive concrete box built in place around the reactor. We have to build a box with sides below the water and then seal off the bottom and make it water tight." Azula rubbed her face, We would have to do it in stages. We have to collect all the rubble and waste, dump it in the hole and make sure the surroundings are clear. In the second stage, we would drive four walls many meters thick deep below the surface. The work of Earth Benders wouldn't work since we need a thick, waterproof, walls without a crack. They would have to use reinforced concrete built and buttressed for strength beyond even the walls of Ba Sing Se. We build another floor many hundreds of meters down that completely seals the site down. I have no idea how to do this but we have engineers that do."

Aang decided to trust Azula. "This is the best solution?"

"Given what we can do, yes." Azula said firmly. "We have huge problems and we need all the nations in on this. How do we work in levels of radiation not encountered since the crust solidified? We will have to decide what is safe and prevent workers from being exposed. We have to find ways of handling extremely unsafe material and learn how much radiation a person can endure without illness. We know nothing at this point. We have to figure out how to build a structure like the wall of Ba Sing Se that will have to last another ten thousand years without leaking. We have to find a way to keep people from stumbling upon the site should we utterly forget about its hazards."

* * *

"Well?" Azula sat behind the rather drab metal desk in her new office with her story in her hands.

"This new office of yours has a window..." Karo replied, "but I hate the red wainscoting."

Azula glared at Karo who had her latest piece of speculative fiction in his hands. "Some courts wouldn't even sentence me if I murdered you and buried you under the tree in the front yard."

"You made Aang sound and act like a hick and you wind up the hero." Karo leafed through the pages. "The newspaper always wants new writers and material but this kind of speculative fiction may have a small audience. Our readers are a diverse..."

Bunch of illiterates?" Azula grabbed the pages from Karo.

Karo stood for a moment, "you _have_ read the _Letters to the Editor_ then?" Karo shrugged, "and you probably wrote the gem explaining why smelly people on public transit should be fined?"

"Someone wrote about that? Azula slapped her hand on the desk. "At long last someone deals with a pertinent social issue! Do you know I have to come up here on the tram and every day I have to smell unspeakable smells. Some of them come in from the outside; I think I pass by a rendering plant – but the old gray haired dude with the bandana should notice that he reeks of garlic!"

"Poverty among the elderly no longer concern us in this modern age," Karo mumbled sarcastically. "I can submit it to my editor on your behalf but I warn you that newspaper editors are a temperamental and surly lot." Karo pleaded and negotiated but knew he would cave in. "He means 'get the hell out of my office' when he says it. And what if one or more of our advertisers sell Uranium or Graphite? He won't let you offend a major advertiser like Uranco Uranium and Graphite."

Azula leaned over and let her deep amber eyes do the talking. Karo stepped back and began to hear the words _in the doghouse_ run through his mind.

Azula glared and handed the story to Karo. "Can't you simply ask?"


End file.
